Success doesn’t always look like what we think it looks like.
The bottom line: All of your investing decisions should be grounded in your own investment policy statement. By taking a "top-down" look at your finances and writing out a road map, your policy statement will add an important element of discipline to your approach.
When done right, working is a series of decisions that you make which allow you to refine and refine and refine your highest and best use. Ultimately, if you are lucky, you will find out where you belong.
If the workers don't keep themselves current - with some assistance and guidance from their employers - then the workers who are in the legacy roles will have to be removed. That's what's so difficult.
Apple makes computers and they have to be great at providing the product they promised every individual who wants to purchase from them. This is where they should spend the bulk of their energy.
I believe in labeling things.
Apple made tools that helped people express their creativity and Steve Jobs knew that so he told that story well. But Facebook makes tools that help people connect and Mark Zuckerberg is hardly a story-teller. Nevertheless, he's become a leader because his products do such a good job of solving a problem.
However, there's nothing more inspiring than a company that does solve problems and those problems are captured as part of a larger story.
As you climb of the organizational ladder, you have to redefine your role in the value chain from player to captain to coach to manager, and for some, to owner. These are different roles and you won't be able to succeed as a manager when you're acting like a player.
In companies, there are three activities that should be labeled better. First there is the "CORE" which is the thing the company does that its customers pay it to do.
There are not enough forums where institutions invite their workers to share their failures in a constructive way so the organization can move forward.
For example, I wear clothes I buy at trendy shops because I don't care much about clothing. If someone wants to create a trend around clothing, I'll happily and blindly follow.
MBA programs are underwritten by large companies and they succeed at producing future employees of large companies. In that regard, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing.
If the question is, how do we best produce business people who can succeed in the post-Great Recession era, then I think the MBA programs and their connection to large companies remains intact but it's not the path to a "Business Brilliant" life. It's a path to a middle-class existence marked by large stretches of security and comfort with occasional eruptions that you're probably ill-prepared to handle. Do I sound too cynical?
The disruption caused by globalization and technology (what Tom Friedman calls hyperconnectedness) will be around for the rest of our professional lives.
I also believe that at a critical point (more than six people?), that collective wisdom turns into group think.
I would have to say that my mother's entrepreneurial perspective, and that of her father's, are very evident in my own outlook.
I found that I loved producing that kind of propaganda and I loved the power that a few students with a Macintosh computer could wield. I was hooked on communications at that point.
During that time, I began writing and designing the propaganda that we distributed to the students who we were trying to convince to join us.
I've always wanted to get my share but, due to my tendency to overcompensate (work harder, push for the win more), I've ended up with more than my fair share. These are some of the life lessons I've drawn from watching my mother and grandfather struggle in the world compared to my own struggles.
Harkening back to a story about my grandfather, I was lucky to attend a great high school in New York, Bronx High School of Science, which has produced more Nobel prize winners than any other high school in America.
I was never going to be one of Nobel prize winners.
By the time I entered this prestigious high school, my interest in formal education had already been exhausted.
In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, my grandfather got me a job at a local messenger company working on Wall Street. I was lucky enough to have been in the business during a stock market boom but just before the fax machine appeared on the scene, let alone email and the Internet. As a result, the messenger business was booming.
I got to carve through the streets of New York's financial district and discover the awesome feeling of being part of a system where, the harder you worked, the more of those scarce resources you earned! I never looked back.
