Success Quote by Clayton Christensen

Christensen is sneaking a moral lesson into the language of management: the real ROI of service is the servant. The line is structured like a humble report from the field, but its intent is prescriptive. By insisting on "without exception", he turns messy human motivation into a clean pattern managers can bank on. It reads like data, but it functions like doctrine.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to the transactional way institutions talk about volunteering, philanthropy, even corporate "purpose". Gratitude typically flows one way: we thank helpers for their sacrifice. Christensen flips that script. The helpers, he claims, are the ones who feel lucky. That inversion does two things. It lowers the moral temperature (service isn't sainthood; it's self-development) and makes service easier to sell to people who fear altruism will drain them. You don't just give; you "grow."

Context matters here: Christensen built a career translating human behavior into frameworks leaders could apply. In that world, "serve to grow" is a leadership strategy as much as an ethical claim. It flatters high achievers by suggesting that meaning isn't found in conquest but in contribution, while also giving executives a palatable vocabulary for character: development, opportunity, growth.

Still, the absolutism is the tell. Not everyone experiences service as uplifting; it can be exhausting, coerced, or unequal. Christensen's neat certainty is less sociology than aspiration - a story leaders want to be true because it offers a way out of cynicism without abandoning ambition.