This management expert battled cancer. Here are the lessons it taught him

Andre Havrylyshyn was in his mid-30s and had just started as an assistant professor at Binghamton University's School of Management when a doctor diagnosed him with multiple myeloma: a rare form of blood cancer.

Medical experts told Havrylyshyn his life expectancy was, at best, cut in half. Nevertheless, he knew it was important not to let this diagnosis and all the grueling obstacles that came with it define him personally or professionally.

After more than a year of chemotherapy and other seemingly insurmountable medical hurdles, Havrylyshyn's cancer was in remission. This life-altering ordeal had forced Havrylyshyn to ask himself new questions about his career: What if only his work in his first 15 years of management scholarship was shared with others? How would he feel? Would he be proud?

These questions helped form the building blocks of his introspective essay, "The Life/Blood of a Management Scholar: What a Cancer Diagnosis Taught Me About the Profession," published in the Journal of Management Inquiry.

Researchers don't usually delve into personal experiences, but for Havrylyshyn, this was an opportunity to reclaim some of what cancer had attempted to take away.

"When you get diagnosed with something like multiple myeloma at age 35, it puts you in a position where you have to try to boil down your whole life," Havrylyshyn said. "That's an unfortunate truth to confront, but one of the best things you can do is to find a way to be comfortable with that."

Before the diagnosis, Havrylyshyn was often more focused on his research career goals than his personal ones. After the diagnosis, he had to redefine his definition of success. He found devoting time to succeed in personal responsibilities, such as family life, can, in fact, enable professional success.

In his academic essay, Havrylyshyn discussed how these experiences align with the broader management scholarship on personal career choice. Among other themes, he discussed his experience recording videos for his daughters should he die from cancer, having to choose which academic projects to set aside and which to continue, and how not to let perfectionism stand in his way as he continued research while undergoing treatments.

When asked what other important management or life lessons Havrylyshyn hopes others can learn from his experience, he briefly paused before echoing the words from his essay: "Make the best use of your time while you have it."

"I may have 'beat' cancer, but this is only for the time being since the type of cancer I have is bound to come back. Moreover, living as a cancer survivor is also its own type of emotional and spiritual challenge," Havrylyshyn's essay concluded. "Do more to appreciate these hard realities and what they imply about how we all should seize the day while we still can before such a thing as cancer forces you to see such truths."