A vision to measure and organize

Meaningful work, part 4

Last week I talked about having a calling. I liked the definition provided by Dik and Duffy (2009) who define a calling as

“... a transcendent summons, experienced as originating beyond the self, to approach a particular life role in a manner oriented toward demonstrating or deriving a sense of purpose or meaningfulness and that holds other-oriented values and goals as primary sources of motivation.”

Having a calling provides drive and meaning to your life. A calling does not have to involve work in the formal sector - you could be called to be a parent or find your calling in volunteering or other ways. The important components of a calling are that it is other-oriented, that you are serving something bigger than yourself, and that it becomes an organizing principle in your life - you are driven to follow your calling. 

I found my way to my calling the year I turned 40 - it took me that long - so don’t despair if you are toiling away at a job you don’t love doing something that does not resonate with you. But also don’t give up just because it doesn’t seem like you can do the thing you want to do right now. What you have to begin with is a vision for your life, and that is what I wanted to talk about for today’s essay. 

I shared this video clip of President John F. Kennedy giving his “we choose to go to the moon” speech. I think it is a great moment of rhetoric, but more importantly, because it is an excellent example of the organizing power of a vision:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

 

The important line is “that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills”. His challenge to do hard things because they are hard, is about choosing a worthy goal, but the important thing is having a goal. JFK challenged the country to go to the moon because it was a goal that was worthy of aspiring to, but also because choosing such a wildly audacious goal forced government agencies and industry to make choices. A vision is both something to aspire to, but also sets boundaries. It directs energy in a particular direction and denies energy to other directions. Once you set out a vision, it narrows where you are going to put your effort by presenting you with a question: does this action support the vision? If it does, then you proceed. If it does not, then you don’t do it. Having a vision helps you organize your activities. It helps you say no to most things so you can focus on the things that will help you get to your goal. 

In his recent autobiographical book, Be Useful: Seven tools for Life, Arnold Schwarzenegger talks about the power of having a vision. Look, before I go further, I know you may have feelings about Arnold, but I suggest you consider what he accomplished in his life: coming from rural, post-war Austria, he became one of the greatest body builders of all time, then a movie star, and a two-time governor of a state that, if looked at in isolation, is the third largest economy in the world. He has continued to be a philanthropist since leaving office. That’s a lot for one life. One of those things maybe happens by luck. When you have all of those things, you have something special. I admit, the book gets bogged down when he gets to talking about all of his achievements at times, but the overall philosophy is actually worth reflecting on. 

Schwarzenegger talks about having both a broad and a narrow vision. His early vision as a young man is simply “America.” His vision of America is admittedly not my vision - it’s Muscle Beach in California. But that broad vision leads to his narrow vision of becoming a champion bodybuilder. The broad vision allows for many narrow visions, and also a chain of visions - from bodybuilding to acting to politics. What having a vision gave him was the ability to say no to things that did not contribute to the vision. To accomplish all the things he accomplished, he had to be intensely focused and disciplined. He studied and worked hard. His gym routine was five hours a day. But in the hours he wasn’t in the gym he studied and he hustled, all in service of his vision of success. 

I like this passage from his discussion of vision:

There are reasons and explanations for all the things that have happened to us up to this point, good and bad. But for the most part, it wasn’t because we didn’t have a choice. We always have a choice. What we don’t have, unless we create it, is something to measure our choices against. 

That is what a clear vision gives you: a way to decipher whether a decision is good or bad for you, based on whether it gets you closer or further away from where you want to go in life. (p. 4-5; emphasis mine)

I like that line: a vision is something to measure our choices against. This is what JFK was saying in the Moon speech. If we could organize ourselves to accomplish something as fantastic as putting a human being on the moon, we would know we had accomplished something worthy as a country. But even something more down to earth (literally) is also worthy. 

For me, my vision shifted when I went back to get my MBA. About six years in to my Army career, I had the chance to take a pause and go back to school. Since I had already earned most of a masters in finance going to school at night, when I showed up at my MBA program, the program director waived me out of all but one of the first year classes, but told me I still needed to take two years worth of courses. I banged out the second year courses, with the one exception for the first year being organizational behavior. I thought at first that I would use the second year of my MBA to pile on a bunch of accounting courses and maybe study for the CPA exam. But I really enjoyed the literature that we read for organizational behavior. Once again I had found a great teacher who saw my spark and, knowing I had a year that I could basically do anything I wanted with, encouraged me to try out the PHD courses in organizational studies. This was when my vision shifted from being a high school English to teacher to teaching business at the college level. What I realized was that, while I loved literature, the things that we were studying in business school, when applied properly, could change people’s lives. Good leadership was all about empowering people to do good. From that moment, everything I did refocused on how to get my PHD in a business discipline so I could teach management at the college level. 

To make that vision come true, I took assignments I didn’t want, except I knew they would make me competitive for a PHD program. I took math classes at night to prepare for the rigors I knew would be coming when other people were hanging out with their family or watching tv or relaxing. And when the opportunity did finally come, despite the cost to my career, as I discussed last week, I jumped on the opportunity. Without a vision like that, I would have continued on, and probably been reasonably successful, but I wouldn’t have been able to follow my calling. Having a vision of getting a PHD drove everything I did until I had that PHD and had the chance to begin my teaching career. A few years later, I had an offer from UNH to join the faculty in the Department of Health Management and Policy where they needed someone who had the kind of diverse background I had, able to teach most business topics, from organizational behavior to health economics. At that time, I had the chance to move back over to the operational side of the Army Medical Department. I could have gotten my career back on track and retired as a colonel - the thing I had sacrificed to go to the PHD program. My wife and I talked it over, I even did some financial projections about how much more my military retirement would be, and once again, despite the cost, we decided together that following my vision of being a college professor was what would make me happiest. It had the side benefit of coming back to New Hampshire, which fit my wife’s vision, as well. 

Having a well-articulated vision, or even a broad vision, helps you organize your efforts, and importantly, say no to things that will take you away from that vision. I had a great opportunity at the end of my Army career - the job I was offered was fantastic and would have played to my analytical skills that I really enjoy using. But even though it was a great opportunity, it wasn’t part of my vision of becoming a teacher - something by that point that I had been chasing after for more than 20 years. I turned down that fantastic opportunity because it wasn’t for me. Turning down good opportunities is important, because there will always be opportunities, most of which won’t lead toward your vision. But with no vision, you will bounce randomly from thing to thing, never really finding your calling.

Schwarzenegger talks about how his vision became more other-focused as he got older. I think this shows that his vision eventually became a calling. My vision shifted as I realized what I really wanted to do was teach so I could empower people, so becoming a management professor was, in a sense, even better than being a high school English teacher (but someday… who knows?). It’s worth spending some time reflecting on what your vision for your life is, and checking and updating it periodically. It may take you years or even decades (like me) to accomplish your vision, but that vision gives your life shape and meaning, and it is something to measure yourself against.