Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

LAURA NASH is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Business School. She is a leading authority in the field of business ethics and has written many books on the subject, including Good Intentions Aside and Church on Sunday, Work on Monday.

HOWARD STEVENSON is Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for External Relations at Harvard Business School. He is the author or coauthor of six books and his papers have appeared in such publications as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Journal of Business Strategy, and Strategic Management Journal, among others.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Praise for Just Enough

"One of the things society needs most right now is a reasoned sense of what is enough. This book will advance the dialogue of this important topic for individuals and their communities."
Hon. Barbara H. Franklin, President and CEO, Barbara Franklin Enterprises former U.S. Secretary of Commerce

"Rarely do we find a book for leaders that addresses all aspects of leadership success. Just Enough does just this in a powerful and inspiring way. From values and self-fulfillment, high performance and results, to legacy, the last great gift of a leader, Just Enough delivers a profound new resource for leaders everywhere."
Frances Hesselbein Chairman, Leader to Leader Institute

"Just Enough will make you think about how you define success in your life in entirely new and creative ways. If you are searching for the kind of meaningful success that endures, read this well-researched and well-written book."
Ralph S. Larsen, former Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson

"Just Enough provides insights and guideposts for dealing with the complex pressures for performance in today's workplace environment. Readers of this impressive book will have a better understanding of what success should mean and how to go about achieving it. Best of all, Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson use their experience and research to provide concrete examples and helpful 'quick points' summaries."
Thomas W. Dunfee Joseph Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility in Business The Wharton School

Aus dem Klappentext

Praise for Just Enough

"One of the things society needs most right now is a reasoned sense of what is enough. This book will advance the dialogue of this important topic for individuals and their communities."
—Hon. Barbara H. Franklin, President and CEO, Barbara Franklin Enterprises former U.S. Secretary of Commerce

"Rarely do we find a book for leaders that addresses all aspects of leadership success. Just Enough does just this in a powerful and inspiring way. From values and self-fulfillment, high performance and results, to legacy, the last great gift of a leader, Just Enough delivers a profound new resource for leaders everywhere."
—Frances Hesselbein Chairman, Leader to Leader Institute

"Just Enough will make you think about how you define success in your life in entirely new and creative ways. If you are searching for the kind of meaningful success that endures, read this well-researched and well-written book."
—Ralph S. Larsen, former Chairman and CEO, Johnson & Johnson

"Just Enough provides insights and guideposts for dealing with the complex pressures for performance in today's workplace environment. Readers of this impressive book will have a better understanding of what success should mean and how to go about achieving it. Best of all, Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson use their experience and research to provide concrete examples and helpful 'quick points' summaries."
—Thomas W. Dunfee Joseph Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility in Business The Wharton School

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Just Enough

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Young Millionaires: What Do They Know That You Don't? -Headline from cover of Entrepreneur magazine, November 2002

"Jane" is an attractive, bright, 30-year-old woman with a passion for life. We met her completely by chance at an isolated bed-and-breakfast in the middle of the southern Utah desert, where she was taking some time off from work to think about her life. She and her significant other, Joe, were hiking the back country near Monument Valley, on a spiritual quest to resolve an important question with very practical implications: Should Jane quit her successful job in software to pursue a career in sacred music?

She was fully qualified to do either. Jane had majored in music and math as an undergraduate, and then put herself through music seminary by playing the organ in a local church. Afterward, she'd taken a good job at a startup software firm in her college city. It was a fun and intense team-oriented experience. Her boss was very supportive of her and the tasks were both challenging and lucrative. But after four years on the job, the money and success didn't seem to make up for the stress she felt in this position. How could something so good feel so bad?

As she and Joe talked about the future, the possibility of marriage and kids, and their mutual love of outdoor adventures, Jane found herself torn between competing desires. The software job was a real ego-booster, the people terrific, and the pay high enough to subsidize an apartment in the city. The long hours were tough, though, and she missed having more time for friends. She reflected on all those concerts she wasn't attending, all those hours of problem solving at work that left her too tired to really enjoy her time with Joe. Her job was giving her a sense of real accomplishment, but something about it was wearing her down-especially when she thought about doing the same thing for another 20 years. Ironically, her problem wasn't that the job was wrong for her, but that it was right.

We asked Jane what bothered her the most about this situation. She fell silent, chewing on a piece of homemade bread to buy some time. Her face puckered, and she was clearly in distress. As last she said with a frown, "It's not just about time. It's about the whole picture-wanting to do different things and not knowing how to make it work." As we murmured encouragement, she suddenly said with dawning awareness, "There's an emotional element to this that the success books don't get at. I've done the right things. I already have 'success.' But it's not enough."

When Jane laid out all the pieces of her problem, we could see why she felt so troubled. Though she was succeeding at her job in software and had the right personality to become a star in her company, another part of her was longing to be involved in music, her true passion. Playing and listening to music provided a satisfaction that was very important and very different from what satisfied her about her software job. Jane missed the sense of contribution and significance that she'd had as a part-time church organist.

But realistically, as a person with high competitive standards, she believed she was actually more talented at solving business problems than as a professional musician. And what about her lifestyle? Her software job was financially lucrative. If she went into a career inside a church, she'd never be able to afford more than a one-room apartment in town. She did not want to live in the suburbs where she'd be isolated from her friends and the culture of the city.

She felt she had to have a certain amount of living space around her. In addition, nature was aesthetically and politically important to her, witness the hiking trip and her interest in the solar-powered hostelry where we conducted the interview-40 miles from the next town in the heart of a sacred space in the wilderness.

However she thought about these complaints, Jane couldn't seem to get control over the dissonance in her own makeup. Each aspect of her character generated a different but possible career or lifestyle. She felt as if she were wandering through a landscape of moving targets. Just as one goal seemed right and reachable, and she took aim to reach it, another popped up that seemed equally appealing and reachable. But try as she might, she could not make all of her interests and needs fit into one cohesive picture.

Intuitively, Jane knew this wasn't just a logistical problem of choosing the right job or recalibrating her financial goals. Her anxiety centered on the larger question of success itself.

Jane wanted to be a success, but not necessarily like the pumped-up entrepreneurs celebrated in the financial magazines and lionized at her fifth college reunion. However, she could find no magazines or models for the alternative success she was seeking. What did it look like? How did it feel? How could the choices she faced be framed to reflect the many aspects of her unique nature and still pave the way to success? What tactics should she use to achieve all the pieces of that puzzle? She felt in danger of becoming like the proverbial donkey who starved to death standing between two stacks of straw because he couldn't make up his mind which one to go after.

Too Many Choices

If Jane is ever going to leverage her talents into a positive outcome, she needs a base on which to stand. Before making a change, she needs a better understanding of where she is now. This process is partly associated with the domain of emotional intelligence that expert Daniel Goleman calls "self-awareness." But Jane needs to develop more than her emotional baseline; she needs to assess the concrete trajectories of her current situation or she may not be able to get what she wants. Why is this so difficult for her?

Jane's dilemma is not unusual today, nor are her problems confined to her generation. In an era that proudly proclaims "no limits," it is commonplace to feel trapped between contradictory possibilities, paralyzed by moving targets and unable to accommodate or even order all the opportunities. Even retiring workers entertain urges to start another business, improve their golf, develop a long-neglected interest, or do something wholly new. Parents with careers hit many moments of reassessment in the course of raising children. Their decisions are not just about time management but about who they want to be in the deepest sense of the word. Some use this self-awareness to reposition their careers toward family needs. Others transform their nurturing inclinations into positions of greater responsibility in their companies.

Such moments of personal reinvention can be liberating, but without some disciplining framework, they can quickly deteriorate into a sense of bondage to the evolving "more." For example, consider two young friends who seek financial wealth by starting a public relations firm. They vow to each other that they'll consider themselves satisfied when they have a $1 million in the bank. The first has a meteoric success and moves his stopping point to $10 million. The other, also successful, has spending habits that delay him from reaching his original goal. Neither is able to develop a sense of mastery over the many...