Omniquest Selection Spring 2013

Our Omniquest selections rotate across operating units, and next semester’s selection comes from my office. I am pleased to announce our Spring 2013 Omniquest book is How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon.

Many of you are already familiar with Professor Christensen’s work on strategy including path-breaking books like The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, and The Innovative University. A professor at Harvard Business School, Christensen was recognized by Thinkers50 as the world’s most influential business thinker. For this book, Christensen collaborated with a former student, James Allworth, and the former editor of the Harvard Business Review, Karen Dillon.

How Will You Measure Your Life? takes a holistic approach as evidenced by its three main sections: Finding Happiness in Your Career, Finding Happiness in Your Relationships, and a final section on living a life of integrity called Staying Out of Jail. Regardless of one’s stage in life, this book will resonate with students, faculty, and staff.

The review in Bloomberg Businessweek summarized: “The book encapsulates Christensen’s best advice to keep high achievers from being disrupted in their own lives….[P]rovocative but reassuring: Peter Drucker meets Mitch Albom.”

In the acknowledgements, he succinctly summarizes the premise of the book,

The paramount assertion of this book is that the theories that describe how management works also explain a lot about what causes success and happiness in families, marriages, and within ourselves – and what causes the opposite as well. This means that the theories…that enable us to envision what the future holds in store for companies, can help us see the predictable results that come from choices and priorities we might make in our personal lives.

I have had the good fortune of personally interacting with Clay Christensen on many occasions and can attest to the inspiration he provides to those around him. He has dealt with serious health issues over the past few years which makes this book even more timely and poignant. As one year ends and another begins, it’s a good time to take stock of how we will measure our lives. Please read this book and apply its many valuable lessons.