I'd like to speak with you today about your life and work, about how to make good decisions about what you're going to do that will stand the test of time. So when Kimberly was growing up in a small town, she always dreamed about moving away to the big city where there would be more opportunity. and when she got older, she had the opportunity to do that. And she actually got her own apartment.
She was excited to be in the city and she went to work for a big law firm and it was intense. She was working long hours. It was hard.
She was learning a lot. And her family and friends back home were very proud of all that she had accomplished. She was on the path, right?
And at the time, she was getting interested in yoga. It really spoke to her. And so one weekend, she decided to go away for a yoga training retreat. And she did that, and it just felt so good.
And then she comes back to her apartment. apartment and she notices the contrast between what she just experienced and her current life. And she realized that she wasn't happy with what she was doing. Reflecting on her work, she thought, this is not me. And she actually thought, my work is killing my soul.
So what does Kimberly do with that? She's invested. She's worked hard.
She's on the path. This is a tough, tough challenge. When Warren was growing up, they had difficult circumstances in their family, and he wanted to overcome that. So he worked really hard to do well in school.
He got good grades, so he was able to get into a good university. And once he got there, he worked even harder. And he graduated and was able to land a prestigious job working for a government agency. And in this job, you have an opportunity to have impact on a lot of people. And you have to work very hard.
You're wearing the power suits. You're working. working on big projects.
And his parents and his friends could not believe how much money he was making. And they were so impressed by his hard work and his success. He loved music, so one day he goes to a music festival outdoors and one of the bands is playing a song by Radiohead. And one of the lyrics in that song just caught him all of a sudden. It was, for a moment there, where I lost myself.
And all of a sudden, out of the blue, a question pops up in Warren's mind. Are you there? And Warren thinks this is kind of strange. He's like, yeah, I'm here. Yes, you have my attention.
And then another question pops up in his head. Are you happy? Are you happy? And I'm not sure he liked the answer to that question. Warren and Kimberly were in the midst of that phase of their life in what I would call climbing mode, right?
They were climbing the ladder of success. They were launching their career on their way working hard and making progress, right? And climbing mode has a lot of advantages. There's opportunity, there's reward, right?
There's learning, development, growth, challenge, all these things. But as I reflect on this, there are also some downsides to this. that I think often we don't think about. And I think part of the problem is that there's a prior step that many people skip over and they get right to climbing.
And that's what I want to talk about with you today. So here's Christopher Gergen. He is a friend of mine.
He's a former colleague. We actually started a company together. And we wrote a book together. And when we did this project, we were really noticing that around the world, there seems to be, and I think it's true.
today, there seems to be a lot of interest in entrepreneurship. Thinking about founders and startups and the whole process, right? It's very exciting.
There's a lot happening. And in intrapreneurship, innovating in large organizations. And of course, one of the mega trends of our time, which is social entrepreneurship, which is applying entrepreneurship to solve social and environmental problems. But when we thought about it, there was something missing in this equation of these things. And so we coined the term life entrepreneurs because we thought there was a growing interest today in applying these principles and practices, not just...
just to starting a venture or solving a problem, but to the way we live our lives. Why can't we be the entrepreneur of our life and have a sense of vision and take action and take risks and a sense of adventure and fun and passion and ownership of our life and what we're doing? We are the entrepreneur of our lives. We were observing more and more people were doing this. So we had fun.
We went around the world and we talked to people about their life and work who were doing this. And we learned a lot. And one of the reasons why we're interested in this project was that Christopher and I were early in our career and we had a lot of questions that we were personally wrestling with.
Who am I? Where am I going and why? What are my options and how do I decide?
And we noticed that there were a lot of people who are our peers who were thinking about these questions, but also other people later in life who were also thinking about these questions at various transitions. in their life or their work. So the power of these questions. And one of the most compelling questions, I think, is beautifully phrased by the poet Mary Oliver.
She has a poem, The Summer Day, and she says, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Now to me, that's a provocative question. It's a great question.
It's the question. question of the hour for many of us. You know, what will I do with my life?
And even as you get older, what will I do with the rest of my life, right? The question, it turns out, doesn't go away. So it's an interesting one to sit with. Another reason that Christopher and I were interested in this whole project was that we had personally fallen into some traps in living and working. And these traps, we observed also other people.
And we kind of, through this project, we learned that there were common traps of leading and living. And I want to share just a few of them quickly with you tonight. One of them is here.
I love this photo, and I just see so much leaping out of the page here. This girl on the side is not happy. She's looking over at what's happening on the other side of the staircase, and she is just not happy. And this is what we do. We make ourselves miserable by what other people are doing.
Sometimes so Robert Spitzer talks about this and he says it's a big problem nowadays He calls it the comparative ethic and he says a lot of us are walking around constantly comparing ourselves And judging our worth by how we stack up on how we look where we live how much money we make and these kinds of things Teddy Roosevelt said that comparison is the thief of joy So it's a trap a I Another trap is conformity. When I was in business school, there was a lot of pressure to follow the herd. There was a lot of stress and pressure and expectations by parents and peers and society to follow a conventional path. And William Dershowitz, he writes about this, and he describes a phenomenon of a lot of prestigious universities like this one, where they have really talented people.
But they are graduating what he calls excellent sheep. Who are really good at following the herd and going about things the conventional way. As opposed to blazing your own path in life according to who you are. And what you care about. And who you love.
And what you get lost in. So it's a big problem for us all. Getting pulled into this. Paul Graham is an interesting person. He's an entrepreneur.
He's a programmer. An investor. He's a pastor.
He's behind Y Combinator and Silicon Valley. And it's a really interesting thinker. And he talks about what he calls the prestige magnet. And it's like there's this magnet for some of us that pulls us because we want, we need, or we're hungry for attention or recognition or prestige or approval. And he says it warps us.
It warps what we believe even we want to do because we're so consumed. by living up to those expectations of other people. And Karen had an experience with this. She was actually reflecting on her career at age 60, looking back on a remarkable career in...
in real estate, in banking, and she was very active in her community. She was volunteering, non-profit boards, she was winning awards, and she was a wife and a mother. So she's a working professional and parent, and all the beauty and the challenges associated with work and parenthood and the tensions and whatnot. And she really rose up and up and up over the years. But at age 60, looking back, she realized that she wasted a lot of time and energy as she says, chasing after achievements and trying to fill up her resume with more and more things that would impress others or that would give her a sense of approval from others.
And she said it was like living on junk food. And then she said, it took me 60 years to trust myself. Bronnie Ware has a really varied background.
She's from Australia, ranching, music, writing, and she ended up becoming, surprisingly, a nurse, and a palliative nurse, which means that she took care of people. who were in the process of dying. This experience was brutal.
It was very intense. And she was truly moved by some of the things that she learned and some of the things that people shared with her in their last days before. were passing away. And then reflecting on it, one of the big themes that came across for her was regret. And she noticed that not all of them had regrets, but most of them did.
And she noticed that the top regret was this. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life that others expected of me. And this caused some big changes in her life as she reflected on this.
I think the challenges of climbing mode, again, there are advantages to this, but there are also some downsides to it. And as I look at it lately, I've thought about one of the downsides is the burnout that can come with, you know, we're so focused on climbing. And the stress and the pressure and the expectations.
We've got to climb. We've got to climb. We've got to climb higher.
And that's hard. And so burnout is a huge problem these days. It's an epidemic.
And even among young people, you're seeing it more and more, which is alarming. Another problem. Problem with climbing mode is the self-reliance, you know? I've got to climb my ladder, and I can't rely on other people. You know, they're doing their own thing, so I've got to climb, you know?
And it can also turn into an ego trip, where it's about self-aggrandizement. It's about what I can do when I get here, and I can have this, so I can do this, and I can be this, right? It can be an ego trip. It's all about me, right? So...
So again, climbing mode has advantages, but I think there's something missing if we don't start with something beforehand. As I think about this lately, I think I'd like to call it discover mode. I think before we start climbing, we should think about which ladder to climb and we should think about who we are and what we care about and what we're good at and we should get out there and try things and learn about the world and have experiences and prototype and...
test. And so we can go deep and it's an iterative process going within but also without. Action, reflection, you know, warrior, sage, discover mode.
And as I reflect on it, it actually fits with one of the great business movements of our time, which is the lean startup movement. And so Eric Ries and others like Steve Blank have been looking at and experiencing entrepreneurship and noticing that a founder will have an idea or co-founders. And then it used to be that they would write a business plan and it would be 20 pages or 30 or 40. And then you would launch it. And then they would notice there's a very high failure rate. Right?
Because it's hard and there's so much uncertainty with innovation projects. But I said, well, what if the process that we're using is flawed? And what if there's a better way?
And so part of lean startup is instead of this 20, 30, 40 page business plan and launching, What if on one page you could have a hypothesis of what your business model is? And then you go out and test it piece by piece. And you say, well, who are my customers?
And what are their problems in what context? And how might I help them and solve some of those problems through what channels and with revenue streams? And you go out and you test and you prototype and you do minimum viable product, MVP, and all these other things.
And it's usually... design thinking. And by doing that, you can de-risk it and you can lower the failure rate, right?
And so this is a really, really fascinating movement, you know, around the world. And I think, and more and more people are observing that this same process can be applied to us as individuals and not just our startup ventures. So I'm interested in this individual process when it comes to our life and our work. Now for years recently, I had the opportunity to work with with my dad on a multi-year leadership project.
And based on our own experiences and research and interviews, we looked at what kind of leadership does it take to build an organization that's excellent, ethical, and enduring. So that gets great results the right way and stands the test of time and operates sustainably. And during the course of this work, we came upon a theme which is that leadership is a quest. You know, if you're leading something, it helps to know what kind of organization you want to build. It helps to know what vision you have of what success looks like, right?
And then you as a team can, you know, hire people and develop them and build a culture and train people and align people toward that vision. But this notion of leadership as a quest, as Max Dupre has taught us. And so I reflect on this and I thought about, well, this could also apply to me personally.
And what is my quest? And am I leading myself? Which I think is an interesting question. And I actually work with entrepreneurs and leaders. And often some of the challenges they face are a function of not leading themselves well.
And in my own quest, as I reflect on it, I've always been interested in the good life. I actually took a course in college about this. And ever since, I've been fascinated. And of course, I would like to have a good life. You know, for me, my family, our children.
But also, I think my quest is I'd like to help other people lead a good life. Right? And there's an interesting guy who's working in this space, Jonathan Fields. And he runs the Good Life Project. And he wrote a book called How to Live a Good Life.
And he's got some really interesting observations about... what comprises a good life. And of course, there's much to that and we're all unique and diverse. But often, there are three components that can make up a good life based on his research and work.
And the first one is vitality, which is your health and wellness. And he likes to talk about buckets. And he says, how full is your vitality bucket? Is it full or is it empty or kind of in the middle, right? The second bucket is your connection bucket.
which is the quality of your relationships with people that you care about. Family, loved ones, friends, colleagues, your community. You have good quality relationships.
So how full is your connection bucket? And the last one is your contribution bucket. Are you contributing to other people or is it just about you? Are you adding value? Are you serving in ways big and small?
So the idea here is that it's really hard. to live a good life unless you're contributing to other people. Right? And so you can do the quick bucket test.
How full are my buckets? And if one is low, go work on it and raise the bucket level. Now it occurs to me that in climbing mode, some of the dangers that we talked about earlier can...
to your buckets. So remember the burnout problem associated with climbing? That reduces our vitality. It's a big problem.
The self-reliance reduces our connection bucket. And I see this a lot, again, with successful entrepreneurs and leaders who are so caught up that they lose touch with family or friends, right? And the same thing with self-aggrandizement, part of the climbing, pulls us away from our contribution bucket.
So we want to bring this back. We want to fill the buckets. So in interviewing people about their life and work, Christopher and I came across this.
this notion of what we call pervasive service, which is an ethic of contribution as a defining feature of our lives. We said, why can't we get in the habit every day of trying to find ways to serve people? Of course, we can start a social venture or go work for one, which is amazing if you do.
You're going to have incredible experiences and opportunities. But also just every day, we're going to have to think about how we're going to be able Today, very simply, we can help the people around us. We can listen to a friend if they're struggling, or if a colleague is behind on something, we can step up on their behalf.
So there are lots of different ways to creatively do this. And just thinking about this in the world today, we are living in an incredible time. There's so much happening with change and technology, entrepreneurship, and there are also a lot of problems that we're facing.
facing, right? Really big wicked problems as the designers will describe it. And it's interesting to reflect on the old model in business and capitalism kind of going from colonial times to industrial times was very kind of short-term focused, shareholder focused capitalism.
And that's what business was about. And nowadays there's this counter movement that's occurring that's sort of getting a lot of traction. That's a different model. It's about about conscious business. It's about a circular economy.
It's about corporate responsibility and sustainability and social enterprise. There's some really exciting, innovative things happening in this space. And we get to choose where we're going to spend our energy and our time at work as well as at home. So, back to Kimberly.
Remember Kimberly? The law firm, she goes away to the yoga retreats and she comes back to the contrast. This is not me, it's killing my soul.
So what is Kimberly going to do with that? So, she said, you know, I love this yoga stuff. I'm just going to try some stuff.
So she puts up some flyers in her neighborhood. She invites people over and she has yoga in her apartment. She gets some candles and some music and some cookies and a sense of community. She tries it. and people like it.
So she does it again and again and more people are coming. And after a while, she outgrows her apartment. She's got to get a bigger space. And then eventually she can get a studio, right? And then fast forward years later, she's got multiple locations, multiple studios.
They're eco-friendly. She's designing a yoga clothing line. She's got books. She's got a podcast.
And she's created a foundation for disadvantaged girls to teach them about leadership. through yoga. Now, none of this was a master plan.
There was no business plan. It was all just a discovery process of trial and error and trying things and eventually following that urge. And it led her to some really interesting and fun places. And you should see her today. She loves what she's doing.
Warren is a similar story. Remember he was there and he's at the festival? Radiohead lyric, you know, are you there?
Yes. Are you happy? No. A third question pops up for Warren, which is, are you you?
Are you you? No. A final question pops up. Are you ready? Warren was ready.
And it turns out, Warren loves to bake. He didn't like this government stuff. He loved baking. So he went home and he started baking.
He put himself through the Warren Brown. school of cooking in his apartment and he started giving away his concoctions to his family and friends and trying new recipes and everything. And then he started catering and selling and a business. And then he had a location and a company.
And then more locations. And eventually he got a cable TV show and he wrote a book about it. And he's had this enterprise in the community that's giving back. And he's building a culture where his employees can have fun and work hard and be rewarded. But again, none of it was a master plan.
It was a process of kind of learning and trying. It took a lot of courage. And that's what I wish for you. There is a time and a place for climbing mode. But think about...
what ladder you're going to climb. And so why not instead begin with discover mode? I think that will serve you well.
Thank you.