From Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life
I noticed a researcher named Diana with her husband, looking after their two children.
Diana held an important role at the lab. (abridged)
The twenty-odd researchers on the team would sometimes grumble when test results from Diana hadn't come back yet — the nature of the work.
She wanted to help everyone, but the startup could afford only so many machines. She had to juggle scarce equipment and a ten-hour workday.
But what I saw then was a completely different Diana from usual.
I was moved by how deeply Diana and her husband poured love into their two children.
Glimpsing that side of her, I began to see her in the context of her whole life. (abridged)
I imagined what it was like each morning when she said goodbye to her family and headed to work. (abridged)
She went home to her family discouraged that she hadn't been fairly recognized. (abridged)
Clearly that workday would cast a poor shadow on how she related to her husband and children that night.
I quoted an episode from Christensen — one of the management scholars who most influenced business practice worldwide — who passed away at the end of January 2020.
As you can tell from reading it: glimpsing a colleague's casual side, he imagines her feelings, empathizes deeply, and shows painful emotion.
You feel Christensen's delicate depth of love, and as a reader you probably pictured people around you.
The episode is an important lead-in to incentive theory at work. If you're interested, please read the book.
Christensen was a management scholar, but not an irresponsible critic who picks corporate cases and sneers "this strategy failed!" — as in the episode above, he held deep respect for everyone.
His greatest work is, of course, The Innovator's Dilemma — the enduring classic explaining why large firms get swallowed by later innovators.
But if you unpack why he could write that masterpiece, it surely comes from his deep love for others.
What's wonderful is that everything starts from the question: "Why do large firms — with excellent management and great products, listening hard to customers and raising quality accordingly — still fail?"
In other words, he isn't among the Monday-morning quarterbacks who flock to say "big companies go brain-dead, don't polish products, rest on vested interests, and don't listen to customers."
Large organizations and the strong tend to be viewed critically.
Especially practical organizations and people become easy targets. In bad cases, people think they deserve criticism.
One episode that hurt me recently: government offices get countless calls from people who intimidate staff with "You work on my tax money!" This is less opposing a strong organization than bullying someone who won't push back — utterly merciless and awful. You can disagree with how an office handles a case, but that attitude should never be allowed.
While they draw criticism, the strong are often surprisingly fragile and collapse easily. Their bonds are weak — even as organizations, they are "lonely."
Finally, what I most don't want misread: this view isn't authoritarianism, nor absolute conservatism.
Simply put, being conservative (not political conservatism — conservative in the literal sense) means there is "rational" consensus-building that many people have supported. Continuously evaluating something only by spotlighting a flaw and looking through a piercing lens isn't desirable.
The strong, too, are fragile and lonely — and it's important to stand beside them with deep love and respect.
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