How do we define success?
Fudge on success
Transcript
The other night, my husband and I were talking about, "What is success?" Because our sons are having these conversations about career, and is it about money, and generationally, there's a whole different set of challenges that our children deal with than we did, because it just is a different world. And the one thing that I've always said about success, even though we've been incredibly blessed financially, that it really isn't about the financial success. And it's very easy to say that when you have it, I think, and it's fine. However, at the end of the day, if you think about all the people who are financially well off, are they successful? What's their life like? What's their happiness quotient? What do you leave? What do you really leave when you pass this way?
If you can say what you leave when you pass is positive, and you're impacted people other than your self gain, then you've been successful. And it doesn't have to be measured in years, but in the lives of people that you touch.
That's one thing. And there are a lot of things that are challenging about getting older, like you wake up in the morning, and your body's creaking. But the brilliant thing about the gift of time is that you have the time to reflect and understand. And I hope I continue to learn. I know I'm going to continue to learn and understand things that perhaps earlier in my life I didn't fully comprehend its importance. And, you know, everybody would always tell you that stuff about success is what people think about what you did. And then you get older and you realize, "Oh, my gosh, they're right. They're absolutely right." . . .
When I first became a product manager, having been a brand assistant, assistant product manager, but now I'm really having a group of people to lead, one of my strengths—my analytical strengths were very good. I could look at and just analyze what was going on in different markets, and what we needed to do. And so it was very concrete, you know. It's like, "Yes, this is right," and you could see it all. You could see it in market share, and all that.
When you start to manage people, some of that concreteness goes away. And I remember having this conversation with my boss, "I'm not sure I can judge how I'm doing." I mean, I could judge from reports, and actions, and market share, but I couldn't judge how I was doing with people, beyond, you know, I liked working with them, that sort of thing. And my manager said, he said, "I can see it's sort of"—as I talked about later, like over time you see a lot, you understand. He said, "The skills you have are going to be more important moving up." . . .
But I'll tell you one of the greatest joys now when I, you know, I'm proud to say I'm a damn good leader. Okay? And I had lunch, when I moved back to Boston, with a young man who works for another company, but worked for me. And most of the lunch was him telling me all the things that he'd learned from me, and the things that he didn't do when he became a leader that just stayed with him. And after that lunch I said, "You know, I was okay."