Strategies For My Life

This week I consumed a complete spiritual meal to create strategies for my life. It will modify the way I conduct my day-by-day routines because I learned to focus on priorities. Also, not less important was the lesson about Honesty and Business Ethics, which I have already been applying in my deals all my life.

Through my religious formation, I learned to set up moral and spiritual core values in advance and engrave them in my heart. That practice helps me to decide between right and wrong when temptations arrive. The same thing applies to life in general and business dealing. This week I learned that establishing clear strategies for my life will give me a purpose and avoid costly mistakes. If I decide now what my priorities are in life, I will not have any hard time deciding which way to go when the road splits or when facing conflicting situations. Knowing my purpose in life define clearly where I am going; otherwise, I would be just “sailing without rudder getting buffed in the very rough seas of life.” As the same author says, “…without a purpose, life can become hollow.” (Clayton M Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life, Harvard Business Review, HBR.ORG)

I learned, too, that after setting my priorities, I should decide how to allocate my time, energy, and talent, and this will shape my life’s strategy.

Another powerful management tool, similar to setting strategies, is creating a culture. Based on my priorities in life, I can establish in advance how I will respond to recurrent problems defining the priority given to each of them.

My church leaders had counseled me to avoid what Clayton M Christensen calls the “Marginal Cost” mistake. It is a justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations with the pretext of “just this once.” This week I reaffirmed my commitment to stay away from vain justifications to fail to my principles and core values. Life is full of situations when piers will pressure you with the logic that there are “extenuating circumstances to consider, just this once, so, it is OK.” Crossing that line once will make it easier to pass it over and over until I could find myself trapped in the point of no return.

I was reminded of the importance of humility. Christensen says, “Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself – and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too.” There is no point in feeling that we are better than others because always will be somebody better than us. Humility opens doors, hearts, and opportunities to teach by our example. Our living generations are overloaded with abusive and arrogant people unaware of their lack of self-esteem. Those are those who “need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves” (Christensen).

In another resource, Frank Levinson shares with us how he came to learn a valuable lesson, Honesty, and Business Ethics. His company replaced an honest and loyal man because of multiple personality problems with another one that conducted himself correctly with other people but was so dishonest that he managed to have Levinson fired under a false accusation. Dealing people of the most diverse background in my business, I learned that you could train a person to perform work the way you want to be done. You could teach a person a new language, or even help him or her to improve his behavior, being polite with customers and coworkers. But you cannot teach a person to be honest. You might teach the principle but up to him or her to choose the straight and narrow path of integrity or not. More than once, I have hired the one with less experience or skills but with great virtues. Those had worked for me many years without incidents or complaints from any customer about them. This week Frank Levinson confirmed with his experience that Honesty and Ethics are not negotiable.

The content of this class this week put in the right perspective my road to success. I cannot work for other people; I feel constrained in my capacity to grow myself and the business. That’s why I have to be an entrepreneur. However, I am learning the fundamental principles of entrepreneurship, surprisingly, for me, not particularly technicalities of business administration but personal values. This week we were asked: Who we want to be? I want to be a man of virtues and integrity in my personal and business dealings. Jesus was a carpenter; if today he would be a builder, how would He be?

I want to be like Jesus.