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CHAPTER ONE

How It All Started

What makes people successful? How can I be successful? How can I build the kind of life I want at work? How can I use more of what I know? How can I grow more fully as a person through my work? These are the questions that have interested me all my life. They may have interested you as well.

I got a lot of advice from my parents, friends, and teachers about how to succeed and what career path to follow, but there was only one problem: None of it seemed right. None of it seemed to fit me. My uncle recommended I start my career selling a line of women’s clothes, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. My university teachers told me to “be a CPA” or “start in sales and then move into marketing.” Marketing might have worked, but I hated accounting and flunked it the first time I took it. I knew I would have to follow my own path, but I was not sure how. I wanted to develop a way of working that would be mine alone, but I struggled to figure out how to do it. I spent a lot of time trying to fit in.

As a student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in the late 1960s, one of my favorite activities was looking through the thick college course catalog and studying the background and degrees of my professors. I memorized the courses they taught, their educational backgrounds, and the names of the schools where they had worked before.

One professor had only a master’s of science but he was the associate head of the chemistry department, which had many PhDs. Why was he the associate head, I wondered, and how could he supervise so many Ivy League PhDs? And why was the longtime assistant head of the news office, who had a master’s, reporting to someone much younger who was just hired and had only a bachelor’s?

I knew I should have been studying, but that catalog fascinated me. I even had a few compatriots with the same obsession. The guys across the hall from me in the dorm would do battle with me to see who knew the most about the professors. They didn’t even have to be our professors, just any professor in the university. “Where did Robert D. Thompson get his PhD?” one of us would shout out. Someone would answer, “University of Texas.” “Correct,” another would reply.

“Where did Ken Stevens get his BA?” “Princeton.” “Right.” “Name two government professors who got their PhDs at Columbia.” It went on like this for hours.

I was surprised when I later became a professor and found out that most students don’t really pay attention to such things. I’ve never met a student who played this game with their friends. But for me, it was fun. I was curious about careers and what made people successful.

It became clear to me as a university student that people who attained a certain status needed more than education, experience, or even a particular set of skills. There was something else. Was it luck? Was it a particular personality trait that made people stand out? I didn’t know the answers, but I wanted to find them. That became a big part of my life’s work.

How about you? What are your theories about why some people become successful? How did you come up with these theories?

When I was growing up, I listened to my father come home every night and talk about work. He owned a drugstore that provided our family with a middle-class standard of living. Every night, he’d come home and rehash the day’s problems, focusing on what happened with his employees and customers. He’d talk about how he wanted to fire one of the pharmacists or clerks. He’d rail against customers who didn’t pay on time. He’d be angry about the police who would come in for freebies. This was a nonstop nightly saga and I just listened. Work sounded like hell. It was not something I was looking forward to, but I also wondered why work had to be filled with so much angst.

I am sure now that listening to my father set me on my path to discover and develop a different way of working. I didn’t think work should be painful.

I spent a lot of my time as a student, consultant, and professor considering how to have a career focused on achievement, satisfaction, reaching my potential, and using more of my talents. Eventually, I did find my way, after many ups and downs. I could have used a book like this when I started out.

When I graduated from college, I vowed to work in a very different way than my father, but it didn’t turn out to be that easy. I didn’t know where to start or what to do. And there were many people in the places I worked who said I should do what I was told and follow the pack. Besides, there were bills to pay, projects to complete, deadlines, peer pressure, bosses, clients and coworkers to deal with, and things I wanted to buy.

As I look back now, the biggest obstacle was really my lack of knowledge about how to work. I didn’t know any other way except the way I saw other people work. And I lacked the confidence to pursue my own path.

In one of my first jobs out of college, I started as a researcher in a consulting firm and eventually moved into a role doing curriculum development, training, and consulting. The clients were most often large organizations. I was in my twenties and working with executives and government officials. I was able to observe the way they worked.

As a young consultant, I got the project work done, but it was always the people that interested me most: how they worked, how they got along with others, their life outside of work, how they led their organizations, the career paths they were on. Consulting gave me a chance to observe the clients up close over a long period of time, as some of the projects continued for several years. Consulting permitted me to indulge my curiosity.

The consulting projects might have been challenging and interesting, but I wasn’t satisfied with my own work situation. I often put in seventeen hours a day, six or seven days a week; I had little time for anything else. I didn’t have much of a social life. The only parties I went to were work parties or events with clients. I lived on sandwiches and take-out food. My only exercise was walking from my office to the coffee machine. Before long I was smoking three packs of Marlboros a day to relieve the stress. There had to be a better way than this. I was definitely on the wrong track.

While still working as a consultant, I began a doctoral program in human and organizational development at Boston University. I wanted to learn everything I could about motivation, quality of life, psychology, sociology, leadership, organizations, and communication. I took an overload of courses and studied with the best professors I could find. I had a tremendous desire to learn and eventually share what I knew with others as a professor and consultant. But there was clearly another reason for going to graduate school, which I recognize now: I needed to make my own life better.

After I finished my doctorate, I moved to Southern California, began my career as a professor, and also did management training for big companies. I stuck to the conventional formula and put out the same message as other professors and consultants. I taught students and conducted management training courses ripped straight out of the pages of textbooks. I lectured on the functions of leadership, theories of motivation, and the obstacles to organizational communication. At the university, I got promoted to associate professor within a year and was even selected professor of the year by students.

I delivered the content with passion and got good feedback from the students and the training clients, but it wasn’t enough. I was just following the pack. I also was not prepared for the minefield of faculty politics and the university bureaucracy.

As I gained more self-knowledge, experience, and confidence, I began to teach more of what I knew. I taught what was not in the books. I forged strong relationships with the students, but it was tough for me to get along with the other faculty members. I was the first new faculty member in almost ten years, one of the few with a doctorate, and it was no place for innovation. When it came time for my tenure vote, I was denied and had to leave the university.

Not being granted tenure was a tough blow, but I realize now it was truly a lucky break. Eventually, I had time to rethink how I worked and look for a place that would value me and allow me to work in a way that was true to me.

There are those times when getting fired or leaving a certain job propels you to do something better. This was one of those times.

I vowed to pay more attention to understanding a situation before taking action, and I focused on developing stronger relationships with colleagues at work. I spent another year in Southern California consulting for large companies and government agencies, and I taught in the undergraduate and MBA programs at Pepperdine University. I taught more of what I was learning about life and work from my own experience—not just from the manual and text—and was beginning to have the kind of work life I wanted.

I never thought I would leave Southern California, but a friend told me about a position with Chapman University, which changed the direction of my life and helped me put everything I knew into action. Chapman hired me for a project with the U.S. military in Asia, helping military personnel transition into civilian jobs. I taught in the university’s graduate programs and counseled military officers and government workers in planning their careers after they left government service.

Every two months, I went to a different military base and often to a different country. I’d start up the project and help people plan the transitions they’d be making as the military downsized. I traveled to bases in Korea, Guam, the Philippines, and Japan.

Instead of coming across as an expert, I tried to understand the military culture. I focused on what the participants needed and shared my own experiences with them. I could understand what they were going through, since I was going through my own transition as I went from base to base. I had never been in the military or in Asia before, so I spent time learning about the military life and local cultures in order to add the most value to my teaching.

I appreciated more of my own skills. I didn’t try to blend in or be like everyone else, nor did the military expect me to conform. The program participants knew I was a civilian and wanted me to contribute my unique knowledge. Military culture actually has more freedom than some companies and universities I have worked with. It’s a place where you can find a niche as long as you are adding value.

Most of the other project instructors lectured from textbooks, parroting the usual formulas for success on the “outside.” They taught participants about the human resource management cycle, the six steps of job hunting, and the roles and functions of leadership. But they didn’t connect with the people in the program.

My approach to teaching and consulting was more “inside-out” than “outside-in.” I focused on helping participants understand themselves and strengthen their courage, creativity, and confidence. My motto was Every day fresh. This is how I was beginning to live and how I encouraged them to live.

Work for me was becoming more of what I had always wanted it to be. I liked the discussions in the classrooms. I was learning as I taught. I began to develop a much richer life outside of work as well. Many of the military personnel invited me to their homes for dinners, barbecues, and holiday celebrations. I rekindled my interest in art, which had been dormant for so many years. I had planned on staying overseas for only a year, but I signed up for another year. Finally, work was working out well. And there were even better times to come.

Toward the end of my second year on the military project, I decided to stay in Japan instead of returning to California. I gave notice and left my job with the military. I thought I would eventually go back to live and work in America, but Japan seemed to be the perfect place for me to use what I knew and for what I had to learn. It was the early ’90s, the time of the economic bubble in Japan, and there were consulting opportunities helping Japanese companies expand overseas. As someone who loves art and design, I appreciated the minimalist aesthetic that I found in Japan. I also was attracted to the focus on groups and teamwork and the lack of overt conflict. I knew I had to learn how to function as a member of a group and learn about harmony. I had to give up my more confrontational style. And there was one more reason, which may have been the most important: I had met Hitoshi Ohashi, who would become my life partner.

I had no permanent job but I soon found consulting work with several organizations that were expanding in the United States, including Nissan, Hitachi, and NEC. I eventually added non-Japanese organizations such as AIG, the European Union, IBM, Intercontinental Hotels, Gap, and UBS to my client list.

After a year consulting in Japan, I started teaching part-time at a nearby university. I didn’t know it at the time, but that institution, Keio University, is considered one of the best in Japan. More Japanese CEOs graduate from Keio than any other university in Japan,¹ and Keio ranks ninth in the world for the number of alumni holding CEO positions in Fortune Global 500 companies.² Eventually I was appointed to a full-time position and became the first tenured American full professor in the faculty of business and commerce.

When I left twenty-two years later, I gave my final lecture to three hundred people and the president of Keio University spoke to the group about how much I contributed to the university. I had to pinch myself—was he really talking about me? What happened? How did I do it? Work was working just as I had once dreamed it would.

I had learned how to make my life better and have a positive impact on the lives of the people I worked with. No one knew how much I had suffered in the past and how much time I had spent learning this different way.

I am still surprised when others tell me I am an inspiration. I didn’t expect that, nor did I seek it out. I never set out to share some profound message with the world. In fact, I never set out to have any message at all. I was just trying to figure things out for myself. After all the time I spent learning about myself, doing so much research, and experiencing so many ups and downs, I had somehow developed a way of working that others were interested in.

This approach starts every day by focusing on what you want to create, a way of working that begins with the question that is the title of this book: What Do You Want to Create Today? This is the approach you’ll learn in these pages. We’ll begin in the same place I started: learning about yourself.