How do you measure success? | Notre Dame Stories | University of Notre Dame

How do you measure success? | Notre Dame Stories | University of Notre Dame
How do you measure success?
Mendoza professor Joe Holt joins Jenna Liberto to talk purpose-driven goals, meaningful work, and redefining success.
What does it really mean to be successful?
Joe Holt has lived enough lives to make most résumés look boring—including time as a Jesuit priest, a stockbroker, a corporate attorney, and even an Ironman triathlete—and he's convinced that success can't be measured by titles, prestige, or what you can show for your work.
In this podcast episode, Holt joins host Jenna Liberto, and together they explore why so many people feel disengaged at work, how to set goals that stretch you without burning you out, and why dreaming about the life you want should come before planning it.
Holt shares the simple tactics he uses to stay accountable, the difference between a “good” job and a “prestigious” one, and why wisdom—more than achievement—may be the measure that matters most. Along the way, he reflects on faith, stillness, and leaving room for a God of surprises.
Listen and subscribe
to
Notre Dame Stories
, the official podcast of the University of Notre Dame, wherever you get your podcasts.
Read the transcript
The transcript has been formatted and lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Joe Holt, the Audrey M. and James E. Jack Teaching Professor of Business Ethics, Department of Management & Organization, Mendoza College of Business
Gallup does this global survey of the workforce every year, and they came out with one this past August. They said that, globally speaking, 23 percent of the workforce is engaged in what they’re doing for work. In the US, it’s 31 percent. But the vast majority are not [engaged]. So it’s kind of sad. The mistake is a lot of planning without enough prior dreaming. [We’re] very good at planning, setting goals, and measuring progress toward achieving them. [But there’s not] enough prior dreaming about the life you want to have in the first place.
Introduction:
Welcome to Notre Dame Stories, the official podcast of the University of Notre Dame, where we push the boundaries of discovery, embracing the unknown for a deeper understanding of our world.
Jenna Liberto, host:
Talking to Joe Holt is like having a conversation with your five most interesting friends all at once.
A former Jesuit priest, Ironman triathlete, stockbroker, and corporate attorney, and now a professor in the
Mendoza College of Business
, he has a lot to say about the twists and turns of life and how we measure success along the way.
Hello, Joe.
Joe Holt:
Hi, Jenna. It’s so nice to see you. I’m excited for our conversation. Thanks for joining me.
Jenna Liberto:
We have the beautiful sun shining into the Stayer Center, which—as we were talking about off camera—is a welcome treat here in Northern Indiana.
Joe Holt:
Absolutely.
Jenna Liberto:
What initially sparked my interest in a conversation with you was
an article you wrote for Forbes about achieving goals
. So tell me your approach. How do you talk to your students about success?
Joe Holt:
For myself personally, it’s not so much the new year that kicks it off. There’s never a point in the year when I don’t have a goal, you know? I’m always driving. What I try to do is think of a goal that is formidable but doable. And then what I find helpful is creating an audience.
So when I decided I was going to try an Ironman triathlon—which was quite ambitious for me because, when I decided I was going to do that, I could only swim one length of the pool, and the Ironman is 2.4 miles of 152 lengths of the pool, so …. But I had some friends who had completed Ironman triathlons, and I told them I was going to do that. So that’s my audience. When you do that, those are people going to check back in with you. “Hey, how’s that going?” You know, “You making progress? How’s the training going?” and everything. It just makes it more likely you’ll stick with it.
I think a lot of times people set a goal and they don’t tell anybody about it, and it’s easier to drop it when you haven’t told anybody about it. When you’ve kind of gone public—and I did a social media post, “I’m going to try this”—that kind of commits me to it a little more. So that is something that I found helpful.
Jenna Liberto:
Let’s talk a little bit more about goals, Joe. What makes a good goal? How do we know we’re pushing ourselves enough, but not too hard that we still can have those small, manageable milestones?
Joe Holt:
It’s a great question. I think to me a good goal is one that helps you to grow in some important area of life without stressing you out. [...] Jim Collins says about, you know, big, hairy, audacious goals that there ought to be a gulp factor. Like, it shouldn’t be a layup. It shouldn’t be super easy.
If you’re 100 percent confident you’re going to achieve it, then it’s not ambitious enough. There ought to be—like me doing the Iron, “Oh my God, can I do that kind of thing?”—there ought to be a gulp factor, OK? But there shouldn’t be a freakout factor. So, it shouldn’t be a layup, but it also shouldn’t be a half-court shot, OK? Maybe a three-pointer.
Jenna Liberto:
Great. If a three-pointer is attainable for you, which it’s not for me.
Joe Holt:
Or me.
The way I think about good goals is that they help you get out of some kind of rut that you’ve been in in life. So when it comes to fitness, for decades, my definition of when I was in shape was: Could I run a 5K on a day’s notice, and could I bench press my body weight? OK. But now that I’ve gotten into triathlons, my definition of fitness is: Can I do an Olympic distance triathlon on a day’s notice and bench press my body weight? So the Olympic distance is swim .93 miles, bike 25 miles, and run a 10k. […] So my floor is now at a higher place.
But you know, I think a lot of us get into ruts in lots of areas in life. So are there ways that I could be a better teacher? I’m always trying to get better. Are there ways that I could be a better spouse, a better parent; could you be a better friend? Lord knows I could be a better Catholic. So what are all the ways I could do that? A good goal makes your life better. A great goal makes life better for others as well.
Jenna Liberto:
I think now we’ve talked about determining if a goal is achievable. So what are some of your broad philosophies or maybe frameworks that you try to instill in your students about how to wrestle with those questions?
Joe Holt:
Yeah. I mean, I was a Jesuit for 12 years, and Jesuits are characterized by what I call a holy restlessness. Always striving for more. They never content themselves with just good enough. So for a Jesuit, the question is not, is the thing you’re doing—the goal you’re setting—a good one? The question is, is it the best possible thing you could be doing? Is it the best possible goal you could be achieving? And they’re not content until you get with that.
So, when the pandemic happened, there were lots of things you could do to help. You could kind of track illnesses, get food for elderly folks, and all of that is wonderful and really good stuff. But I’d had some prior experience as a nurse’s aid working with terminal cancer patients. Twenty percent of the cases and deaths early on were frontline health care workers. Given my experience, I thought I could help out in that way, that [it] would be a better thing for me to do.
One of the things that fascinates me about universities is you hear a lot of talk about intelligence, knowledge, analytical ability, and problem-solving skills. When’s the last time you heard a substantial talk about wisdom? Nobody talks about wisdom. It’s like a really big thing to not talk about. What does it mean to be wise, you know? And are you living a life that is wise? And as a Catholic school, you know, to what extent does faith shape or inspire what you’re doing?
But it’s interesting that, I think, when you ask people if they pray, a lot of times they say yes. What they mean is that they say prayers. But do you pray in such a way that God can get a word in edgewise?
George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, wrote this play, Saint Joan, on St. Joan of Arc, and there’s a scene where the king brings St. Joan before him, and she talks about God communicating to her with these voices telling her what to do. And the king says, “What? Why does God send voices to you and not to me? I’m the king, not you.” And she says, “Well, well, God does send the voices to you, but you don’t hear them. You don’t go out in the field at night to listen to them.”
You know, the angelus rings, and you cross yourself, and then you get on with it. It’s kind of perfunctory that way. So, how many people are really listening?
Jenna Liberto:
Joe, we talked about how you’re the dictionary definition of success. When it comes to success in business or when it comes to what makes a good job, how are those sometimes different? And how do you talk to your students about that?
Joe Holt:
What I do with them is ask them a question of, you know, what makes for a good job? In the hypothetical I give them, high pay and prestige is fine so far as it goes, but I ask them, can you think of somebody who’s got a high-paying or prestigious job for whom it’s actually not a good job?
What are the other things that go into it? Being that’s fine so far as it goes, but what else goes into it being a good job? And you know, and they think of things where, you know, it’s not consistent with your values and beliefs. I always ask them, are you going to be working someplace where you can be who you are, morally and spiritually speaking? Are you working someplace that encourages your better instincts or makes it harder for you to follow your better instincts? Are you working someplace that’s going to enable you to have the work-life balance that you want to have and have the time for the relationships that matter most? Are you working someplace where you feel you’re making a positive difference?
So Patrick Lencioni wrote this book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, and one of the signs is irrelevance. Irrelevance is a sense that the work we do around here really doesn’t make a difference. We’re really not helping anybody. So it’s hard to be enthusiastic and do your best work when you don’t feel you’re making a positive difference.
That way, I talk about [how] there’s a difference between negative freedom and positive freedom. So, negative freedom is freedom from, the absence of external constraints. I can go where I want to go, do what I want to do, say what I want to say. I think what most Americans think [when they say] we’re free people. I think that’s what they mean.
Positive freedom is freedom for. So, given that you can do whatever you want to do, what is most worth doing? What is worthy of devoting your time, talent, and energy to? A good job is one that you feel is worth devoting your time, talent, and energy to, you know, and when you meet Jesus at the end of life and he says, “OK, let’s look back and see what you did with the time, talent, and energy I entrusted to you,” are you going to be happy with what you see?
Attaining wealth position says nothing about the kind of person you are, though. It defines success entirely in terms of having. You have wealth, you have fame, you have an impressive position—it says nothing about being, your character, and the quality of your relationships. So if you have wealth, fame, and an impressive position, but you’re a jerk, you know, nobody likes and trusts you—is your life a success or not? And it says nothing about, have you made life better for other people or not? It says nothing about that. And clearly that should have something to do with success.
Jenna Liberto:
And what you’re touching on, too, I think, Joe, gets to my final question, which is that your own professional career and personal life has had so much variety. In working towards whatever you were working at the time or your larger goals, how have you left space for God to bring you into a new direction? And what advice would you have for us when we know we need to slow down and listen to where we should be as well?
Joe Holt:
Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I’m God.”
We, I think, for our culture, are really great at getting things done. I don’t think we’re very good at being still. [...] most of us really need to be on the go. Actually, the last day of class when I teach ethics is devoted to the topic of solitude and self-reflection. Just that kind of being quiet because, if you don’t somehow build that into life, that’s going to be a problem.
The best professor, the most impactful professor I had in 26 years of school, was Peter Gomes, who was a university chaplain at Harvard. I took a homiletics course with him, and he was just a good, holy, and wise man. And he said to us, “Trust God, trust yourself, and trust the people of God,” and that always kind of resonated with me.
But it seems to me that life has always seemed like this treasure hunt, where at every step you get a clue that tells you how to get to the next step, but not to the end. And I think a lot of peace is just learning to kind of accept that “I don’t know how it’s going to end.” So you make the best decision you can based on the evidence that life and the Lord of Life are giving you in the moment, and then you live the decision, and then see how that works out. But always be open to, maybe, there’s something different.
One of the things I like to reflect on is in the Gospels when Jesus calls the disciples Peter and James and John, it says they left everything and followed him. And I think we read that over too quickly, because that’s a big thing, leaving everything to follow him. And they had a hometown, they had jobs, Peter was married, you know, they had friends and all of that. So my question to the students is, when they left everything to follow him, to what extent did they know where they were going? I think the answer is not at all. They knew who they were following, but they didn’t know where they were going. And by the way, if they did know where they were going, would they have followed, right? To me, [if] that’s what life was like for the first disciples, why should it be different for us. So I think I’ve always been open to just different things possible and a God of surprises.
I tell the students that the words I want on my tombstone are “He meant well. It wasn’t very good, but his heart was in the right place.” I said success to me will be dying and meeting Jesus and hearing him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And I don’t think I’m on the path for that yet, but that’s where I want to be. So, just always remembering that life is wonderful, the world is amazing, filled with incredible possibilities, but, you know, it ends.
Jenna Liberto:
Thank you for this intriguing conversation. We have lots to think about. I appreciate you, Joe. Thanks for your time.
Joe Holt:
Appreciate you. Thank you. My pleasure.
Notre Dame Stories
is the official podcast of the University of Notre Dame. It was created by the Office of Public Affairs and Communications.
Special guest:
Joe Holt, the Audrey M. and James E. Jack Teaching Professor of Business Ethics in Mendoza College of Business
Host: Jenna Liberto
Executive Producer: Andy Fuller
Producers: Jenna Liberto, Josh Long, Staci Stickovich
Videographers: Zach Dudka, Josh Long, Tony Fuller, Michael Wiens
Graphic Design: Brittany Searles and Becky Rogers
Related
Breathe with both lungs
Notre Dame's theology chair demonstrates Catholic character in a global context.
Pathways to Notre Dame
Affordability and access with Micki Kidder.
Notre Dame as a leading research university
A conversation with Jeff Rhoads, vice president for research.
Light/Dark