Posted by I must admit. I was slightly nervous about my trip to HBS this year. A year into having left corporate life, I felt once again I might feel too different, like I did not fit in. Luckily, the stories are true – by the time you get to your 15th-year reunion, most people are focusing on life choices and equalizing their values with their actions. And not so many are giving you a resume update. At last, I did not feel so much of an outlier this time around.
Content for the Brain
I am privileged to be able to attend reunions 2 years in a row, and given last year I cared mostly about content for the soul, this time I decided to also get some content for the mind, of which there is always plenty in these reunions.
With Professor Lerner, we discussed the importance of Venture Capital to continue to foster innovation and invest money in an engaged manner. However., we can’t ignore VC has been focused on narrow layers of innovation. Furthermore, not all VCs are made equal and the money is definitely more concentrated on large (and less diverse) funds. As VCs continue to incorporate AI in their due diligence and search processes, they will need to remember AI is suitable to evaluate the next incremental thing, but not “the next big thing”. After all:
Data is based on what happens in the past.
With the Dean of the Harvard Medical School George Daley, we discussed at length the impact AI can and will have in the clinic, in the lab and in the classroom. In a surprisingly empty room (was everyone AI-ed out?), the Dean did various live demos on ChatGPT 4o, showcasing simple uses even in the presence of a non medically focused model. It is when the dean says that 80% of patients don’t get the effect they really need from medication that one realises how far off and how important precision medicine is. And don’t worry, AI will not replace doctors, doctors with AI will replace doctors without.
Finally, and given my passion for growth in companies, I was thrilled to seat in Professor Ranjay Gulati’s session about “Growth Strategies in Turbulent Times”. The session was packed with content as we tried to work through why it is so hard to sustain success in companies over time. We went through the 3 pillars + 1 that can make or break growth over turbulent times or, in other words, how companies can deal with change without failing. First, strategy is central for companies, but strategic focus can create tunnel vision. Second, the organization can be the real enemy, more than outside forces. Silos are a killer to a flexible organization, and so is complex decision making. Guess what, if you are at the top calling the shots, chances are people don’t want to tell you the bad news! Third, the culture says that rules can be in the underlying, unspoken assumptions. But you can indeed affect or change culture. Just no one said it would be easy. For a while, Professor Ranjay would have stopped at these 3 pillars. But then, with a little help from a famous CEO, he added purpose to the list. Something with a meaning to the self and a consequence to the world. It is such a but part that he ended up writing a book about it!
Content for the Soul
I noticed in my 10th reunion that HBS started offering sessions on crafting your life and the science of happiness. Felt weird right, to have to teach a bunch of very successful over-achievers how to be happy. The sessions were packed. Last year, I dived into the portfolio life, as well as the study on happiness. This year, I decided to attend (for the second time), Professor Leslie Perlow’s talk on “Crafting your Life”. Professor Perlow challenges everyone to really understand what it means to measure our lives as a success and truly evaluate how our actions reflect the values we believe and say we have.
Funny enough, in one of my conversations with an old friend at HBS, I found myself telling him that finally I felt like my body and soul were aligned, after having known where I wanted to go to for the last 10 years, but really not living up to those values entirely.
If you are wondering how to check your balance, ask yourself the following 5 questions:
- Am I getting enough joy, meaning and achievement in life?
- Am I getting enough joy and meaning in my work?
- Am I spending enough time with others?
- Am I maximising my time on high value activities? (if you know what they are!)
- Am I minimizing my time on low value activities? (if you know what they are!)
If this leaves you wondering, make sure you check the life matrix to get you started.
A lifelong journey of learning
I am generally not so great at consolidating knowledge from conferences and workshops and have often asked friends how they do it. I did 2 small things at the end of each session or day – I asked myself
- What did I learn that was new today?
- What will I do different after this?
I did this because I value learning and developing myself professionally and personally everyday. But despite it being one of my values, I am not methodical about it. So I decided my actions had to be aligned with my values, and I took these 2 small steps to change it.
Reflections
Going back to HBS every 5 years (or more in my case) is a privilege, not because people pat each other on the back for their successes, but because I use it as an opportunity to reflect on the last 5 years and perhaps get some ideas for the next 5. This was the first time my mind and soul could be truly open to reflection and exploration without limits and I am grateful for the opportunity.
More importantly, it was also the first time I felt I was not alone in the journey to align my values and my actions, to do work that I enjoy, to dedicate time to meaningful work, to really balance how I want the next 5 years of my life to be. Courtesy of our Section A president, we spent 2.5 hours in a room sharing the answers to some pretty difficult life questions and finding out that there is more in life that is common than that it is different, even if some of us live a world apart. For a moment, I felt less of a need to fit in and more of a feeling that I belonged.