I love the NYTimes’ ‘Corner Office’ segment on Sundays because they ask CEOs fairly penetrating questions. Or they pick CEOs that offer revealing answers. Either way, it’s a good match.
A terrific example of this was on display the Sunday before last, when the Times sat down with Guy Kawaski, founder of Alltop. This guy is Mark Twain-level quotable.
Maybe it was just my education, but much of education is backwards. You study all the hard stuff, and then you find out in the real world that you don’t use it. As long as you can use an HP 12 calculator or a spreadsheet, you have the finance knowledge that you need for most management positions. I should have taken organizational behavior and social psychology — and maybe abnormal psychology, come to think of it.
I don’t get the sense he’s arguing so much that quant is useless, just that when you really start to manage people, quant is less useful than an understanding of how to develop complex personalities.
Q. And what would you say to business school graduates?
A. It’s a more general lesson, but in the end, success in business comes from the willingness to grind it out. It’s not because of the brilliant idea. It’s because you are willing to work hard. That’s the key to my success.
Yes! Hard work ≥ Innate talent. Read the article.
I was watching a nature show last night about elephants. Elephants are amazing: soulful, intelligent and totally committed to their families. They mourn their dead and remember “gravesites”. When threatened, they form a circle around their young and pregnant. And for some reason, people have hunted and abused them since ancient times — for ivory, or war, or entertainment.