Last Lecture

Mark Twain said, “Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.” For a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs, the fear of failure is what stops them from chasing their dreams. They allow this fear to stop them from ever even trying. One characteristic of successful entrepreneurs is the ability to view failures as learning opportunities that will teach them something and will help them progress on the path towards their dreams. Looking at failures from this viewpoint gives them the courage to push-on despite the knowledge that failures will come. Tom Kelley, the General Manger at IDEO, gave a lecture on the importance of viewing life as an experiment. All of us are probably pretty familiar with the scientific method. The scientific method includes five key steps – observation/research, hypothesis, prediction, experimentation, and conclusion. The prediction and experimentation steps within the scientific method may end up being completed multiple times before a sound theory is developed. The first time the experimentation is completed is not considered to be a failure, but rather an experience that is helping to refine the hypothesis. When we look at life through scientific method lenses, we realize that what we consider to be failures actually help us to progress towards our end goal. With regards to failures Randy Pausch once said, “Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things.” Never let failures or brick walls get in the way or achieving what you really want in life!

I once had a conversation with a professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts, and he said that the number one thing he has observed about successful business people is their ability to identify a need in a market and fulfill that need. In other words, they identify a problem, or paint point, and provide a solution. If you base your business around providing a product or service that provides a must-have to your potential customers rather than just a nice-to-have, you will be successful. An example of a business that is currently trying to do this is Uber. Uber is an on-demand transportation service that directly competes with taxis. Anyone who lives in a big city knows that taxis are a major source of pain. They’re dirty, the drivers tend to be unfriendly, and they can be very expensive. Uber created a convenient app that customers use to connect them to a reliable ride that takes them to their destination, and it’s almost always cheaper than a taxi They also have a rating system in which customers can rate their driver, and very poorly rated drivers will lose the ability to transport customers. Uber has so far been pretty successful in spreading their business to major cities, and lot of people are seeing the value they provide and are no longer using taxis. You don’t want to start a business that won’t survive. Make sure that whatever product or service your business provides is solving a real problem that people will value.

Lastly, make sure that what you do is your passion. Being an entrepreneur takes perseverance. Steve Jobs said, “I am convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” This perseverance more easily comes when you are passionate about the mission of what your company is doing. When find something in life that you love – do it! It will become a source of happiness and pride in your life.

Faulty Assumptions

One of the videos that we were asked to watch this week was a clip from a presentation given at Stanford by Stan Christensen. In his presentation, Christensen mentioned a couple faulty assumptions that people make with regards to their career. One of these assumptions is that the first job out of college is a huge deal. Christensen said that most individuals end up only spending 2-3 years at their first place of employment post-graduation so it really isn’t as big of a deal as individuals make it out to be. It is much more common in today’s day and age for individuals to switch from company to company throughout their career rather than just staying at the same company for 30+ years, so individuals shouldn’t stress as much about finding the “perfect” job right out of school. 

Another faulty assumption that Christensen said individuals make is that specialization is needed in order to be successful. Christensen said that while people tend to want you to specialize in something, it is important to try to be a generalist. The possibility exist that after dedicating your time and energy in specializing in something that it could eventually become irrelevant and that specialization would no longer be needed. Instead of specializing, Christensen said “what you want to do is put yourself in a position to take advantage of opportunities when they come up.” I think this statement is a phenomenal suggestion, and is something that I am going to keep in mind as I approach my time in the working world post-graduation.

The Hero's Journey

What’s a Business For?

Integrity and virtue are incredibly important to an economy because without them, there will be a lack of trust.  When participants in an economy cannot rely on the words and actions of others, the system breaks down.  People will be unwilling to engage in commerce with each other.  The fraud of the recent years (Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, etc.) has left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, and the root cause of these cases was a lack of integrity and virtue.  People in positions of power abused the trust they had been given in an effort to obtain short-term profits—all at the expense of long-term viability and their own spiritual welfare.

According to Charles Handy, the purpose of a business is not to make a profit.  It is to make a profit in order to be able to do something more or better.  In other words, the wealth generated by a company is simply a means to doing great things for others; it is not the end in and of itself.  This greater good, this noble purpose, is the real justification for the existence of businesses.

Handy recommends greater honesty in the reporting of financial results as well as a reduction in weighting of stock options in the compensation packages of executives.  I definitely agree with his first suggestion; I believe that the only reliable and usable financial information is that which is transparent and honest.  Financial information which is not this way is essentially a fabrication and inherently useless.  As for the second suggestion, I’m not sure how I feel about it.  I can see the point that he is making, but I’m not sure it makes sense, on the other hand, to not provide performance-based incentives to people who are responsible for the financial performance of their companies.  However, there needs to be a way to ensure that the decisions they make are in the long-term interest of the company.  I would suggest that the options simply vest over a longer period of time—some vest right away, and some vest in twenty years, with a percentage of the options vesting throughout this time, so that the executives so compensated are getting financial rewards that are appropriate for long-term planning.

Reflection on Lessons Learned This Week

The biggest source of learning for me this week was the time I spent reading The Hero’s Journey.  I thought that this book was a monumentally helpful piece of literature, and I really enjoyed the way it was structured.  I liked getting little snippets of larger texts, poems, and scriptures in the context of what I should be looking to learn from them.  This format is easily digestible and it’s easy to pick it up and put it down as needed, all whilst learning nuggets of knowledge along the way.  I think that the thing that I learned from this book that was most meaningful to me was learning how to overcome the Giant of Despair when I am faced with serious adversity in my pursuit of a great goal.  Struggles and challenges will inevitably come as I try to do great things.  I have to steel my resolve and dive right into the tasks in front of me.  It is better to face my challenges head on and trust that God’s plan for me will work out if I am in motion.