Or so said Emile Zola, among many other fabulous quotes in this Tom Peters PowerPoint. Another gem:
"The object of life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting, ‘Holy Shit, What a Ride!!!’ —Mavis Leyrer
Why do we find conflict so entertaining?
How is it that Jerry Springer could create a TV show that is premised on people arguing with each other?
Why is it that I’m so enamored with the Lee Siegel (New Republic) / Ezra Klein (American Prospect) battle? (Siegel: "There’s this awful suck-up named Ezra Klein–his "writing" is sweaty with panting obsequious ambition…")
Or how about Tom Peters and Peter Drucker beef? (Peters: "I participated in a Drucker tribute a few weeks after his death…I was supposed to open with 5 minutes of laudatory remarks…I’ve seldom worked so hard on a thing—but in the end I couldn’t pull it off")
Even in books, conflict makes the day, such as when Michael Wolff says to Jon Rubin in Burnrate:
No. Fuck you. No accommodation. No nothing. I’ll bury this company. I’ll bury you. I’ll bury anything else you’re trying to do in a firestorm of publicity and litigation. I want you out of my company. You’re a lightweight and a snot nose. Get out of my company. The longer you stay, the more money and pain it will cost you.
In his latest fable Death by Meeting, Patrick Lencioni declares conflict and drama as integral to effective meetings. I tend to agree — fruitful discussion emerges from varying points of view. Conflict can be both entertaining and productive. Here’s to the devil’s advocate.
The problem is some people shy away from conflict. Some workplaces stifle it. In my view, if there’s no conflict, what’s being discussed is probably not very important.
Back when I was a young freshman in high school, spending 20 hours a week on my company, a few city managers to whom I was pitching my product asked whether I was going to college. I hadn’t given it a second of thought. "Of course," I responded. Everyone in my immediate family had gone to college. My Mom’s side of the family tree is full of academics.
Some thought this was a good idea ("There’s so much to learn" or "The social life is amazing"). Some thought this was a bad idea ("It will hold you back, you need something better, and different")
I didn’t ask myself this question until my junior year in high school. I had been successful in the "real world" with my entrepreneurship. I had developed a curiosity about why the world works as it does that demanded different skills than the traditional classroom. My grades in school were poor — in part due to my intensive commitment to my company, in part because I wasn’t good at scoring high on tests (both the testing and recall). The kind of intellectual exposure I encountered in the business world — smart, high energy folks who challenged my ideas and provided new ways of thinking — seemed absent in the classroom. Despite top notch teachers and impressive students, so many of my classes in high school couldn’t engage me (or I couldn’t engage them). I wasn’t "above" the classes; our styles didn’t mesh.
For a long time I was simply ambivalent about whether college was in my future. I remember a reporter asked me this question and I said, "Yes" and then a second later added, "If it makes sense with where I’m going."
Then I met marketing author Seth Godin in New York and discussed where I was in the college process. He posed an idea I call "Real Life University." Seth questioned whether four years in a place that teaches how to be normal filled with students who are looking for a degree helps me. He wondered aloud whether two years on the road traveling in different cultures, and two years reading books and meeting mentors, would be a better experience.
From that point forward my opinion on the matter became clear: I want to spend four years of my life learning. I don’t want to graduate from high school and just start more businesses. After all, business is only kind of interesting. I want to learn. I want to explore.
"Real Life University" – four years of reading and exploration, guided by a "board of trustees" of advisors and mentors – became a real idea I refined and held in my back pocket.
I wanted to give myself options. I would pursue the traditional college admissions process and see what happens. If none of my college options suits my fancy, I thought to myself, I can always do Real Life U.
An unmeritocracy at best, profoundly corrupt at worst, was how Malcolm Gladwell described the college admissions process in America nowadays in a New Yorker piece in the spring.
"Not so much palaces of learning as bastions of privilege and hypocrisy," said The Economist recently on U.S. higher ed.
With the insane mass media attention on the college admissions process, it was a little surreal for me to enter the fray in spring ’05. Given my tendency to both participate in something and analyze it dispassionately at the same time, for the past two years I’ve been a saddened "victim" on the one hand and an amused commentator on the other.
Over the next week I will describe my experience.
Part 2: Does College Make Sense For Me?
Monday: "Thinking about Real-Life University"
Part 3: Visiting colleges, thinking about fit, and writing applications
Tuesday: "Telling the Ben story in 500 words"
Part 4: Thick and thin envelopes
Wednesday: "Visiting three colleges in April"
Part 5: The decision and deferral
Thursday: "Ben, I always tell people there’s no such thing as a perfect fit. This is an exception. This school is a perfect fit."
Part 6: A Major Announcement
Friday: Where I’ll be spending four years of my life
I am in the final writing stages of my book. It’s about my entrepreneurship (founding Comcate). It’s a business book, geared to young entrepreneurs and adult businesspeople. In addition to my story, it includes lessons, boxes, and guest excerpts — also known as take aways — which allow the reader to start realizing his or her own dreams by seeing the world through the prism of entrepreneurship. More on my book, soon.
The current working title is:
My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley
Do you have any better ideas or suggested modifications? Although I don’t control the title, I do have some input, and I’d appreciate your feedback. Thanks.
"We will work harder and more effectively for people we like. And we will like them in direct proportion to how they make us feel." – From A Leader’s Legacy by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner
I’ve been thinking about likability a lot recently. It’s huge. Being likable is not the same thing as being smart, extroverted, or funny.
The "liking principle" is part of Cialdini’s principles of persuasion and for good reason. When people like you, it’s easier to influence them.
I’ve thought about how I can become more likable at a tactical level. One theory I have is we don’t like people who intimidate us. Because of my physical stature and occasional tendency to use academic (read: pretentious) prose, and because of my eclectic interests and activities, I’m sometimes said to be intimidating. To combat this I have recently begun to use more informal language in my everyday talk and have kept an "open posture" (open palms, feet pointed out, and shoulders slightly curved in). At the end of the day, I’m me — deal with it! — but I don’t think it hurts to think about the components for successful leadership.
The thought that it’s better to be feared than to be loved, I think, is bullshit.
How do you think about likability?
My close friend Andy started as a freshman at Vassar College and has had some great posts on his blog. He just posted a hilarious Top 10 list for "How to hit on girls in co-ed bathrooms." Andy, how sophisticated you’ve become since entering the elite ranks of American higher ed, big man.
Money grafs:
10) Shave at least three times a day. Make sure that you are wearing minimal clothing while doing it. Remember to create serious tension on your pectoral muscles so that they look as defined as possible.
…
5) Sometimes, DON’T flush the toilet. Then, hang around the sinks, pretending to brush your teeth or even flossing if you feel like being really naughty. When the hot babe you wanna get with walks over and squeals audibly, that’s when you make your move. Strut over to "see what the commotion was," express your outrage, and then be the champion stud that flushes the toilet for the fine doll. If you can somehow flex your biceps while doing this, that’s mad respect and an obvious turn-on. If she still isn’t feeling you up by this point, you can mention that you’re going to "kick that fucker’s ass real good," and show him, "how to treat a lady." You gotta be careful with this one, but when you pull it off, it’s pretty pure.
..
4) Explain to her that there is a water shortage some South Asian country (it doesn’t matter which one; feel free to be creative. Bonus points if it doesn’t actually exist). Describe the conditions: infants dying of dehydration at a horribly innocent age, families not having enough water to wash their clothes, young children reaching for mugs that they think are full of water only to put it up to their lips and realize that there is nothing there. If you’re particularly brave, act out each of these scenarios, and on the last one, make sure that you look tormented and confused upon realizing that your imaginary glass of water is empty. She should be crying by now if you have any semblance of skill. Swoop in, console, and admit that there is very little that "we" can do about it, but there is one simple way to save water that could one day be used in that country: sharing showers. Then grab your towel and suggestively look at the nearest shower. If you’ve made it this far, you’re in.
Last night both George Soros and David Brooks were in San Francisco. I saw New York Times columnist David Brooks in conversation with Jane Wales, CEO of the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
I arrived at The Fairmont hotel, atop Nob Hill at the only place where each of the cable car lines meet, a bit early, so I read a book in the lobby. The person sitting next to me was an attractive, young 30′s woman who got on her cell phone and started screeching in the way a teenage girl does about Britney. Only for her it was excitement to see Brooks. (A sign I should enter the dating market?)
I, too, tremored with excitement to see one of my favorite commentators in-person (he even has his own del.icio.us tag). Brooks’ writing combines intelligence with humor. He calls himself a "comic sociologist". His book On Paradise Drive is hilarious.
The talk mostly focused on foreign policy and Iraq, but predictably Brooks sprinkled his remarks with many very funny lines. I was both surprised and not surprised that Brooks seemed pessimistic and discouraged by the world. Surprised because Brooks seems to be the resident optimist in a punditry that loves to bemoan. Not surprised because, well, with the Middle East right now it’s hard not to feel down. Overall, as impressive in-person as in print.
The WAC — of which I’m a member — continues to impress. Future programs this month include Tom Campbell in conversation with Lou Dobbs, then Bob Woodward, and Joseph Stiglitz. Jane Wales is one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met and a real treat for San Francisco.
Scattered notes:
This is a great post on Gideon’s Blog about what should comprise a broad liberal arts education. Every pundit has their list of "essential knowledge". I found this list thoughtful, as I’m someone who believes in the liberal arts as the underpinning to an active engagement with the world. Excerpts:
I. Origins of the Western Tradition.
An integrated humanities course with a Great Books focus. Students read Homer, Hesiod, the dramatists, Aristophanes, Thucydides and Herodotus, the pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, the Hebrew Bible and some ancient Near-Eastern contextual material, Plutarch, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucretius, Greek and Latin lyric poetry, secondary material on Greek, Hellenistic and Roman History, the Christian Scriptures, Augustine and other early Church material. I am very sorely tempted simply to stop there. That is easily enough material for two years; it is certainly enough material for two terms, and this is only part of the curriculum. I think it’s important, moreover, to give a sense of this classical material as living, as still being accessible, and if we race on from here through Dante, Chaucer and Aquinas; Locke, Hobbes and Shakespeare; Goethe, Cervantes and Milton; and on and on through Nietzsche and Joyce and whatever else, then Plato and Euripides will only be cultural signposts, matter to be learned for tests, rather than living presences in students’ lives…
II. English Poetry.
A very traditional course. Beowulf, Chaucer, the Pearl Poet, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Marvell, Milton, Pope, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Whitman, Tennyson, Poe, Longfellow, Hopkins, Yeats, Kipling, Eliot, Frost, Stevens, Larkin, Bishop. I’ve probably put in poets that some would consider dispensible and left out others that some would consider indispensible; forgive me, and consider this a sketch rather than a definitive list. This is covering a lot of ground, and so necessarily the epic poets are not going to get treated fairly. I’m not too upset about that, because if students learn how to read well, they can return to Spenser either in another course or even later in life; if they don’t learn to read well, then they will not be able to….
III. Aspects of American Civilization.Not a history course. It presumes a decent familiarity with American history; I imagine a strong basic American history text assigned as a reference and to help students who weren’t paying attention in high school to keep up. This is, rather, an open-ended exploration of the nature of American Civilization with both a historical and a comparative method. So, for example, one key "aspect" of American Civilization that would be explored is the nature of American Constitutionalism. To that end, students would familiarize themselves with the British antecedents to the American system, read the Federalist Papers and some of the anti-Federalist arguments, read some key Supreme Court decisions, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, and finally some of the best contemporary analyses of the American Constitutional tradition (examples: Democracy and Distrust, The People Themselves, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction; pick your favorites). Other topics would include immigration and the origins of the American people (start with Albion’s Seed and move on from there); the American foreign-policy tradition (I’m imagining working within Walter Russell Mead’s framework); slavery, anti-slavery and the problem of race (David Brion Davis, Eugene Genovese, etc.); the American experience of religion; one can go on and on…
IV. Principles of Aesthetics.
Secondary schools around the country have been cutting back on art and music; meanwhile, the tribunes of high culture from the major art museums to schools of architecture are failing utterly to teach humanistic aesthetic principles; and popular culture is almost comically debased. We are surrounded by ugliness, to the point where most people do not even know how to think about the aesthetic. The course will spend a little time reading about theories of the aesthetic (Aristotle, Ruskin, Pater, Nietzsche) but will mostly approach the topic directly, by interacting with works of painting, sculpture, architecture, photography and music. A strong emphasis will be placed on solving aesthetic problems: how to achieve such and such effect in a way that works….
V. Probability and Statistics.
No branch of mathematics is more important to thinking intelligently about the world than statistics…
VI. Concepts in Economics.
Ignorance of economics is nearly comparable to ignorance of statistics. But people need to understand some economics for reasons ranging from their own personal prosperity (understanding the importance of savings and investment, and the function of different forms of debt like mortgages and credit cards, as well as intelligently capitalizing on one’s own skills and talents) to participating intelligently in political life….
VII. Logic and Rhetoric.
…Formal logic as such is an esoteric discipline, but basic logical principles need to be drilled into students, as do different rhetorical strategies, and then they need to use these principles and strategies in real situations….
VIII. Problems in Philosophy.
…I titled the course, "Problems in Philosophy" because I think that’s the best way to approach philosophy for true novices: present problems that philosophers have wrestled with. The emphasis is intended to be on "purer" areas of philosophy: how we can know something, how we can communicate meaningfully, etc., and to avoid aesthetic, moral and political questions that might be dealt with adequately in other classes in the core.
IX. Introduction to Human Biology.
A course in human biology would be valuable for many reasons. First, for reasons of health; people really should know about how their bodies work and how to keep them working. They should also understand their own development; both men and women should have a realistic understanding of fertility, of child development, and of aging, because they will be planning to start or delay starting families, raising children, and taking care of aging parents. Our increasing understanding of human biology also informs all kinds of moral and policy questions that students are engaged with….
X. Colloquium on Ethics, Morals and Values.
Unfortunately, this course will inevitably be a gut course, one you almost can’t possibly fail. But I think it’s appropriate for there to be a course in the core explicitly devoted to exploring questions of ethics, morals and values; questions of how one should live one’s life and what is the good. Students will have learned a great deal about the Western Tradition’s classical approaches to these problems in t he Origins course; they will have learned something about what modern knowledge brings to bear on these questions from the Economics and Human Biology courses; they will have learned something about how to intelligently phrase and answer questions from Logic and Rhetoric. They should have the tools, in other words, to ask and try to answer what are, ultimately, the most important questions….
Professor Linus Yamane at Pitzer College posts his philosophy of life. I like it. I believe we have one shot at life, that we can seize only one day at a time, and tomorrow is no guarantee. My impending mortality looms…
A writer can have, ultimately, one of two styles: he can write in a manner that implies that death is inevitable, or he can write in a manner that implies that death is not inevitable. Every style ever employed by a writer has been influenced by one or another of these attitudes toward death.
If you write as if you believe that ultimately you and everyone else alive will be dead, there is a chance that you will write in a pretty earnest style. Otherwise you are apt to be either pompous or soft. On the other hand, in order not to be a fool, you must believe that as much as death is inevitable life is inevitable. That is, the earth is inevitable, and people and other living things on it are inevitable, but that no man can remain on the earth very long. You do not have to be melodramatically tragic about this. As a matter of fact, you can be as amusing as you like about it. It is really one of the basically humorous things, and it has all sorts of possibilities for laughter. If you will remember that living people are as good as dead, you will be able to perceive much that is very funny in their conduct that you perhaps might never have thought of perceiving if you did not believe that they were as good as dead.
The most solid advice, though, for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, 1934 (Preface to the First Edition).
