The Kaleidoscope Strategy

January 26, 2008

We compare an effective success strategy to a kaleidoscope – that simple mechanical device with a lens,mirror, and a long tube housing separate chambers. Each chamber holds pieces of glass that constantly shift as the tube is moved. Although the chambers are separate, the eye sees one unique picture made up of the various chambers. Mirrors reflect the entire set of glass chips and enhance the complexity of the pattern. The beauty of that pattern comes from the variety and symmetry of the design. Although the patterns in a kaleidoscope are inherently unstable, changed by your own movements or by outside forces, the pieces provide ongoing satisfaction as they take their places within new patterns.

Now imagine a slightly different kind of kaleidoscope, one that is your own vision of a successful life. This kaleidoscope also has four chambers – happiness, achievement, significance, and legacy – and you can add brilliant glass pieces (goals sought and fulfilled) over a lifetime, making your unique pattern richer and richer. In this metaphor, success is about choice, movement, pattern, and a structure that holds all the separate activities together. And, just like a kaleidoscope, you have to hold this pattern up to the light. By regularly assessing the picture you are creating in all four chambers, you can quickly spot “holes” – places you feel require more attention – in your activities and be assured that you are justified in interrupting other work to attend to them. The rest of the chips will be enough for the moment, but not enough for the rest of your life.

Through our research, we discovered that the people who achieve enduring success rely on a kaleidoscope strategy to structure their aspirations. Not only do they continually create new chips in each of the four categories, but they also choose their actions so that the whole picture will display a pleasing proportionality. Feeling deep satisfaction in each category strengthens these achievers’ ability to turn away from one category when another needs attention. It allows them to say,“I don’t need to work away at this particular thing until I’m satiated and hate the very sight of it. This is just enough.”They recognize the importance of setting their own standards for “enough” and not falling prey to the lure of the infinite “more.”

This is exactly the kind of thinking you see in good leaders: They anticipate what will be needed in all four dimensions of success despite pressures to deliver to the maximum in one. This is what the subjects in the three examples at the beginning of this article were lacking. They had no framework in which to identify and sort multiple desires so that they could go after their conflicting goals sequentially in a proportionate mix.

The burned-out venture capitalist needs to understand that scaling back his achievement goals is part of a larger picture of expansion in the other categories, rather than a paralyzing prospect of loss and “doing nothing.” This kalei- doscope view will allow him space to cultivate the emotional relationships he craves with his family. That doesn’t mean he should give up all forms of achievement; he simply needs to readjust the level of energy he puts into that category. Doing so will require more creative thought and versatility than he’s exhibiting now.

The executive overseeing the problematic product rollout was framing his dilemma in terms of short-term versus long-term achievement. He would do better to reframe his challenge in terms of legacy: What kind of platform would he be creating for the success of this product and that of future managers in the company if he decided to release incomplete products? Thinking about the problem from this perspective helped him clarify his priorities. Instead of feeling that he had to make a trade-off in a negative sense, he could take a positive view of what needed the most attention and what was worth sacrificing for. In the end, he delayed rolling out the new product line – and not only were the retailers delighted with the final results, but the product division, in crafting the solution, discovered a new way to coordinate and leverage its technological capabilities across three countries.

The software engineer torn between computers and church music needed to shrink or redirect her goals in some activities and develop them in others. When she tried the kaleidoscope strategy, she quickly saw that church music registered high in her significance category but would always be a limited outlet for achievement. She had neither the skill nor the opportunity to become a star musician. Software had more potential for significance than she had previously thought. She needed to learn how to change her job in ways that emphasized the social value she was creating in the products she worked on and the help she provided to others. She began to see benefits in framing church music primarily as an exercise in significance rather than in achievement, with all its competitive and financial associations. But to fill both chambers, she’d need to restructure her job commitments in order to minimize travel and commit to choir practice. When she looked at the whole picture of goals she could satisfy through the sum of these activities, scaling back suddenly seemed more positive. The pieces were enough. And, she recognized, taking this path would require continued growth on her part – something she had forgotten she valued and which she now had the confidence to pursue strategically. Enduring success required enduring commitment.

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