Superhabits

Superhabits post #1

Life, for so many people, is harder than it needs to be.

Why — and is there anything that can be done about this? For several years I have been reflecting on, exploring, and researching this question. I am now ready to begin sharing what I've found — the answer to what can be done about it has a lot to do with a particular set of habits that I have come to call "superhabits."

My journey began several years ago, sitting in my office, facing a big problem. It was the largest and most ornate office I’d ever had, and indeed the largest office I’ve ever seen, even though I work in Washington DC, a city of large offices. (I once calculated that my entire house, a statistically average 2,500 square foot suburban home, could fit — length, breadth, and height, within that office.) The building containing it and the office itself were constructed in the late 19th century, shortly after the founding of my University, The Catholic University of America, at a time when Catholics were still considered an underclass in the United States. The grandeur of the office was intended to signal that this diverse group of immigrants had come of age.

The job that came with the office was that of Provost, or chief academic officer, of our university, and I was facing the biggest challenge of my career. I was sitting in that office trying to thread a way forward for our academic enterprise in the face of numerous and drastic shifts in what students, professors, donors, companies, communities, and governments are expecting from higher education institutions. It was a sort of nightmare version of a three-dimensional chess game. You’ll remember that from Star Trek: multiple chess boards at different levels, with their pieces interacting across boards. Except imagine in this case that on each level, instead of a chess set there would be a different board game entirely. A game of Monopoly, with Clue above that, and Settlers of Cataan on top. With all the pieces interacting with each other. And every now and again, someone swaps out one of the games with another; Clue is gone, and now on this level we have Stratego. Oh yes – and the rules for each game keep changing.

This challenge, of how to run a complex institution where every dimension seemed to be shifting simultaneously, was not unique to us. Anyone trying to run – or work in – any reasonably complex organization today faces similar, constantly shifting issues. Think about it. Many of your stakeholders, whether they be employees, customers, or students, have grown up since childhood without receiving the kind of family support that they needed to flourish and that we used to take for granted. As a result, astonishing numbers of them suffer from mental health challenges of varying levels of severity, and so many of them, through their immersion in social media, struggle with a lack of focus and self-control.

As Ashford Hospitality Trust (AHT) CEO Rob Hays wrote recently,

our employees and colleagues are struggling. They are living with anxiety, depression, and isolation, particularly in the wake of the pandemic. Many of them do not have flourishing relationships, resilient marriages, or supportive friendships. Distraction is rampant. They are confused on issues of identity and self-worth. They have no idea what it takes to be genuinely happy.

At the same time, a growing concern for social justice and human rights has raised expectations for the level of care that we should provide for our stakeholders. Add to these our current climate of identity politics and suspicion of free speech — which fuels cultural and political divisions, declining civility and ideological polarization, and an inability to dialog or even consider opposing viewpoints — and the task of building a productive and purposeful organization can on some days seem nigh impossible.

This is what I was struggling with, and perhaps you are, too.

I felt, though, that I should have been prepared for this, that by now I should have acquired the right skill set. Unlike most academic administrators, who work their way up through the ranks of assistant, associate, and then full professor by publishing scholarly research, and then one day find themselves responsible for multi-million-dollar budgets, with little preparation, I had taken a different path. I was a “late convert” to academia, having had a successful career in business administration before completing my PhD program at Darden Business School. I had been the youngest brand manager worldwide at Procter & Gamble, graduated in first place in the IMD MBA Program, one of the highest ranked business schools in Europe, and was a consultant with McKinsey & Company. Since then I had become a tenured professor, and had been the founding dean of The Busch School of Business. I had even learned about the art of managing successful organizations from the master himself: Patrick Lencioni, bestselling business author and now a friend, had personally run an intense, two-day-long workshop for my leadership team at the founding of our business school.

And yet, I was still struggling.

Slowly, I began to realize that the solution for how to succeed and thrive in this highly complex world of ours is to recognize that building the right skills — in ourselves and in our teams — is not enough. Rather than trying to learn new skills and techniques for dealing with each of the complex problems we face — skills that can become outdated and irrelevant to the next wave of problems that crash over us — we need to work on something more lasting.

I came to realize that there is a durable set of capabilities that can make life — especially life in organizations — both easier and more effective, and that various groups of thinkers have been studying and promoting these under different names.

I would like to show how all these come together, by highlighting these capabilities, the people who have been working on them, and their research.

It's amazing stuff. It has changed my life, and will change yours.

More to come, tomorrow.

Today I am attending the 2024 Harvard Leadership and Happiness Symposium with Arthur Brooks, Tal Ben-Shahar, Karen Guggenheim, and many other leading lights in this area, which is of great relevance to this question of how to make life easier, more effective, and, certainly, happier.