By now, education was supposed to have been thoroughly disrupted. While digital platforms are great for disseminating knowledge, they are terrible at demonstrating what knowledge you have to others. For that, a credential from a respected institution can’t be beat.
Greg Hale was an electrical engineer with a curious spirit when he interviewed for a position in Disney’s engineering department almost 30 years ago. He was eager to see how things worked behind the scenes, so he applied for the job figuring that even if he didn’t get it, he would at least get a backstage tour.
Confucius, when asked about leadership, likened people to grass and the ruler to wind: whichever way the wind blows so will bend the grass.
I’ve been thinking lately that it all comes down to one question: What’s it worth?
Were the nights away from my kids, years invested in school, midnight sessions hammering away on my next book as I built my consulting business worth it? Was the time you invested selling, stressing, persisting as you built your business worth it?
You know you are an entrepreneur at heart, but you find yourself working inside a large organization. How do you cope?
“If you don’t like your job, quit.” This is part of the manifesto of holstee.com, one my favorite entrepreneurial companies, and is perfect for a conversation I am having with the head of strategy of a large financial services technology firm. We are in his office overlooking Park Avenue in Manhattan. He’s laying out for me some of the challenges faced by a growing number of firms that are trying to inject a more innovative, entrepreneurial spirit into their cultures.
You’ve got the idea. You know it will work. If only you can move fast enough, keep up the pace of those younger, smaller startups. The opportunity should be yours but you worry that bureaucracy will slow you down.
I’d say I bat about 500. For every 1,000 goals I’ve set for myself, if I am truly honest, I’ve hit maybe 500 of them. I wanted to write a book … and I wrote a book. I wanted to build a successful investment fund … well, that’s still a work in progress. I married the woman of my dreams but I don’t (yet) have the six-pack abs of my dreams.
Thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherers huddled around campfires would share stories of the “great hunt” or battle. Our heroes in these narratives left the safety of camp, clad in leather, wielding swords, stepped into dark woods to battle a mythically large creature or enemy, and returned in glory with meat to feed a village.
