How would you an­swer this ques­tion, “Why do you work?” I’m sure that the re­spons­es will in­clude, “to pay bills, to pro­vide for my fam­i­ly, to ad­vance my ca­reer, to live well and to achieve fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence.” All vir­tu­ous re­spons­es. But, let me pose an­oth­er per­spec­tive on the ques­tion. How about if we con­sid­er that we work “to fund a de­sired lifestyle?” Would this of­fer an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a more mean­ing­ful and thought­ful re­flec­tion on the ques­tion?

Let’s stay with this con­cept for a bit. If we work to fund a de­sired lifestyle, then it stands to rea­son that we should be clear on that par­tic­u­lar lifestyle we de­sire? Yet, how many in­di­vid­u­als take the time to en­vi­sion, vi­su­alise and de­sign their de­sired lifestyles? I would imag­ine few­er, rather than larg­er num­bers of in­di­vid­u­als. The ab­sence of a clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed life plan can eas­i­ly se­duce an in­di­vid­ual to be­come pas­sive about liv­ing a life that is mean­ing­ful and we know that when a pas­sive state be­comes rou­tine, sur­ren­der­ing to in­er­tia is not far be­hind.

The big ben­e­fit to hav­ing a clear­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed state­ment on one’s de­sired life, is the gen­er­a­tion of a set of in­di­ca­tors for mea­sur­ing the qual­i­ty of that life. These in­di­ca­tors are unique to each in­di­vid­ual and con­fer mean­ing to that in­di­vid­ual’s life. A life with­out mean­ing, be­comes, of­ten, a dis­heart­en­ing mis­ad­ven­ture.

With­out a life plan, how does one mea­sure suc­cess? Through the achieve­ment of out­ward trap­pings, or by the achieve­ment of one’s “mean­ing in­di­ca­tors?” Should that which is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be the out­ward trap­pings of suc­cess, name­ly aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments, grand lifestyle, trav­el, lux­u­ri­ous va­ca­tions and the like, be used as the yard­sticks for mea­sur­ing suc­cess for every­one? I think not. The mea­sure of suc­cess for each in­di­vid­ual, is as unique as his or her thumb print. As a mat­ter of fact, my ex­pe­ri­ence has been that the pan­dem­ic has caused many in­di­vid­u­als to re-eval­u­ate what suc­cess means to them. Some of these new con­sid­er­a­tions in­clude pur­su­ing mi­cro-wins in the form of non-ne­go­tiable fam­i­ly time, in­ten­tion­al self-care, pro­tec­tion of men­tal health, giv­ing life to one’s dreams, in­tol­er­ance for tox­ic work­places and re­duced over­time hours.

An en­vi­sioned and ar­tic­u­lat­ed life plan al­lows an in­di­vid­ual to mea­sure whether he or she is achiev­ing the out­comes that will give life mean­ing. It al­lows the in­di­vid­ual to mea­sure what he or she trea­sures. The big ques­tion be­comes, “What do I trea­sure?” and the de­c­la­ra­tions can al­low the in­di­vid­ual to pur­sue those trea­sures with greater in­ten­tion­al­i­ty. I be­lieve that tak­ing this ap­proach will en­able an in­di­vid­ual to lo­cate work in its right­ful place, in the grand scheme of his or her life. Maybe, just maybe, there will be the dis­cov­ery that there’s life be­yond work.

Like­wise, busi­ness­es have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to de­clare what is trea­sured. One form of this un­der­tak­ing is en­shrined in val­ues state­ments de­signed to have a lengthy shelf life, whilst an­oth­er form is en­shrined in strate­gic busi­ness pil­lars that cap­ture de­c­la­ra­tions of an­nu­al strate­gic in­ten­tions.

These pil­lars are crit­i­cal el­e­ments in pro­gress­ing the an­nu­al op­er­a­tional frame­work of a busi­ness. They are a part of the work­ing mech­a­nism for mea­sur­ing the in­ten­tions, goals, ob­jec­tives and tar­gets of the busi­ness. While they ex­ist to mea­sure what the busi­ness trea­sures an­nu­al­ly, there’s a lit­tle chal­lenge.

The cre­ation and pop­u­la­tion of strate­gic busi­ness pil­lars is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be an ex­ec­u­tive ex­er­cise, re­strict­ed to the strate­gic de­ci­sion-mak­ing lev­el. The mod­el hard­ly makes its way to mid­dle lev­el de­ci­sion-mak­ers and hard­ly ever dif­fus­es across in­di­vid­ual strate­gic busi­ness units. This cre­ates a dis­con­ti­nu­ity be­tween the strate­gic ar­chi­tec­ture at the top and the op­er­a­tional frame­work across the rest of the busi­ness. It is very dif­fi­cult to mea­sure what the busi­ness trea­sures when there’s so much dis­con­ti­nu­ity.

Whilst the chal­lenge with in­di­vid­ual life plan­ning is the in­abil­i­ty to lift-off, strate­gic busi­ness pil­lars have no prob­lem lift­ing off, the chal­lenge is their abil­i­ty to re­main air­borne and not lose al­ti­tude. As in the roll­out plans as­so­ci­at­ed with the pil­lars suf­fer­ing from a lack of ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion and polic­ing.

So, what about ser­vice ex­cel­lence and the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in this sce­nario? I can’t em­pha­sise enough, the need for busi­ness­es to be clear on what they should trea­sure and mea­sure when it comes to cus­tomer suc­cess. It means pri­ori­tis­ing three ar­eas of im­por­tance. The un­der­stand­ing of what suc­cess, val­ue and ef­fort­less­ness mean to the cus­tomer; main­tain­ing rel­e­vance by adopt­ing a busi­ness mod­el that is en­abled to de­liv­er these val­ue points, with­in a dig­i­tal uni­verse; and mea­sur­ing cus­tomer hap­pi­ness in re­al-time, so that there is an ur­gency in re­spond­ing to cus­tomers’ needs and there­fore, sus­tain­ing their trust.

To me, the ul­ti­mate ben­e­fit of mea­sur­ing what is trea­sured, on the in­di­vid­ual end, is the achieve­ment of a life well-lived. The ben­e­fit on the busi­ness end, is earn­ing the cov­et­ed em­ploy­ee and cus­tomer trust.