■PREFACE

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

Albert Schweitzer, humanitarian

When was the last time you were called an “arrogant asshole” and it led to a compliment?

I remember the last time it happened to me: December 16, 2002. Yes, someone really called me that to my face—in public, no less. And yes, she was right.

This public unmasking made me think more deeply about my life and career path than I had in my first fifty-one years. In reflection, I kept coming back to the central question of this book, the question that will help you begin your journey from business school to your unique destiny.

Over the past six years, this question has spawned other questions, many of which were posed by MBAs attending my speeches. Your “assignment” is to choose those questions that resonate most deeply with you and address them. They will help you think differently about your career and your place in the world. They will help you find your path of service, your personal path of happiness and fulfillment.

But first, let me tell you what happened that unusual winter day.

After the corporate embarrassments of the unethical activities of Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, and others, the Harvard Business School Alumni Association was not going to invite another CEO to speak at its 2002 year-end session. Instead, the alums decided to get someone “safe.” They chose me.

I’d left Harvard in 1988 after nearly twenty years as a student and professor. I’d been back to school many times since then, speaking to various groups of students, large and small, about a network of service-minded MBAs I had cofounded, Net Impact, and its parent organization, Social Venture Network, the preeminent network of socially conscious entrepreneurs.

It was always fun to come back to speak at my old haunt—and a bit strange, too. Maybe I didn’t act the same or speak the same as I did at the other business schools I’d visited. Whatever it was, something unusual always happened when I spoke at the institution that had been my “home” and my identity for the first half of my adult life.

I gave my speech to a packed hall of HBS graduates. It seemed to go well, I guess. I handed out my latest media effort, a three-CD series titled Finding Work That Matters, and asked for questions. Many hands shot up, and I chose one near me, in the first row. The hand, the person, looked familiar. I wasn’t sure. Soon I would be.

“Thank you for coming, Professor Albion,” she began. “My name is Sara Smith [not her real name]. I was one of your students in first-year marketing back in 1982.”

Yes, I remembered her and drifted back twenty years in my mind. I tried hard to picture the thirty-one-year-old Professor Albion. Then came the wake-up call.

“May I say that while I think we learned a lot about marketing in your class that year, you were the most arrogant, self-centered asshole I had ever encountered in my life.”

Thank you, Ms. Smith, I thought, for that announcement to yours truly and the audience. That should get me a speedy request to come back to speak to alums soon! Maybe I had given her a bad grade? Maybe not. But thankfully, there was more to come.

“And as much as you came across as a Mr. Know-It-All, and as much as your self-absorbed attitude and arrogance repelled me then, today I find you kind and gentle, a caring man, who has wisdom to share and has done so in an engaging, collaborative manner. Today, you seem to have as many questions as answers—a curiosity and wonder about life I find quite infectious. And you are so energetic and seem so happy! I don’t know what happened in the last twenty years, Professor Albion, but you obviously learned a lot. Congratulations. Good for you!”

In the following weeks, I realized that Sara had described someone I no longer knew (I hoped!) but someone she had described accurately. Back in my Harvard days, despite my accomplishments, I felt insecure and ungrounded. I was in need of reconnecting with who I was, who I wanted to become, and what I was placed on earth to do. I was not yet on my destiny path.

Sara got me thinking about my destiny: If I died, how would I be remembered? What would my eulogy be? Would people remember me as the first person she described or as the second one? My reaction was simple: “I wish I had thought about this earlier in my career!”

More Than Money asks one question in many ways, using questions and stories to reframe your career decisions for life’s essential purpose: What will your contribution be? The answer will tell you how you will be remembered, how future generations will think of you when they look at your ancestral tree, and when your eulogy is read, whether or not you’d be proud of what is said.

How paradoxical, you might say, that you start your career search by contemplating your death! Yet that is the key to developing a destiny plan— the key to living your life.

Beginning with the question of contribution rather than the more usual “How can I make a living?” makes all the difference in the path you’ll choose and where you’ll end up. It will give you a strong foundation for all that follows, implicitly changing your business focus from getting to giving. Your reward is that you’ve taken the first step toward managing your career with your heart, the pathway for great things to happen.

To answer this question of contribution, you’ll need to consider how your work will fit into your life. Be aware that in death, rarely will loved ones remember you for your work in private enterprise as much as for what you’ve done for your family and contributed to civil society.

There is one caveat that is crucial to your ability to make that contribution when making your career choices: What you perceive to be your “safest” choices may be your riskiest, and vice versa. Reframing this mental and emotional shift, convincing you to make it, and supporting and guiding you to act on it in your own way—that is the work of this book.

More Than Money is meant to complement a business school education. Whereas a rapidly growing number of schools now have courses in sustainable development, microfinance, corporate social responsibility, and social enterprise, few have material to help you develop a sustainable career. The book is written so that whether you are considering business school, entering business school, a current student, or a graduate, it should speak directly to you. I know. I’ve sat in your seat.