Recent estimates suggest that U.S. business organizations have attained the greatest disparity between the highest and lowest paid members of any in the world—and not by just a little. A growing number of observers are beginning to argue that this can't be a good thing for employees and their morale, customers, investors, or even American competitiveness. Now a case is being made for the possibility that this may not even satisfy the deep-seated needs of those anointed with mega-rewards, especially if each successive increase only leads to an even higher expectation on the part of those obsessed with "scorekeeping," regardless of their performance.
In their new book, Just Enough, Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson of Harvard Business School suggest a definition of success gleaned from interviews with, or surveys of, at least 150 successful professionals and executives as well as others from, as they say, all walks of life. According to them, success comprises a set of "desired ends": "happiness (feelings of pleasure or contentment in and about your life), achievement (accomplishments that compare favorably against similar goals others have strived for), significance (a positive impact on people you care about), and legacy (establishing your values or accomplishments in ways that help others find future success)." According to Nash and Stevenson's subjects, not all ends are achieved simultaneously even by those who have managed to achieve this kind of balance in their lives. In fact, it requires the capacity to concentrate on one or more dimensions of success up to the point of "just enough," then shift the emphasis to one or more other dimensions at various points in a lifetime. This kind of success is not achieved through the single-minded pursuit of any one of these things as if the goal were "never enough." In other words, the endless pursuit of any one of these goals may actually diminish one's success, as self-assessed at the end of long career.
Is this an exercise in amateur psychology? An effort to project the values of one group of managers who are on their way to "making it" onto the population of managers as a whole? Or is it the bedrock of a useful exercise in self-examination that might benefit particularly those whose pursuit of wealth in the executive suite has brought them unfavorable headlines, lawsuits and, at the extreme, jail time? Is it the kind of thinking that could, if translated into practical examples and exercises, benefit prospective MBAs in search of success? Or does the concept of "just enough" fly in the face of attempts to command, through performance incentives, the total dedication and time of those most able to lead value-creating change? What do you think?