What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 (3 page)

After showing video clips from the 1939 Marx Brothers movie,
At the Circus,
I ask the students to uncover all the assumptions of a traditional circus: a big tent, animals, cheap tickets, barkers selling souvenirs, several acts performing at once, playful music, clowns, popcorn, strong men, flaming hoops, etc. I then ask them to turn these things upside down—to imagine the exact opposite of each one. For example, the new list would include a small tent, no animals, expensive seats, no barkers, one act performing at a time, sophisticated music, and no clowns or popcorn. They then pick the things they want to keep from the traditional circus and the things they want to change. The result is a brand-new type of circus, à la Cirque du Soleil. I then show them video clips from recent Cirque du Soleil performances so they can see the impact of these changes. Once we do this exercise with the circus industry, it’s easy to apply to other industries and institutions, including fast-food restaurants, hotels, airlines, sporting events, education, and even courtship and marriage.

Once you get the hang of it, this is an easy, back-of-the-envelope exercise you can use to reevaluate all aspects of your life and career. The key is to take the time to clearly identify every assumption. This is usually the hardest part, since, as described in the case about balloon angioplasty, assumptions are sometimes so integrated into our view of the world that it’s hard to see them. However, with a little practice, it becomes a useful way to look at your options in a fresh light.

Some people are particularly good at identifying and challenging assumptions. In their quest to find creative solutions to seemingly impossible problems, they question the limits of what is reasonable and possible. They start their lives over in exotic locations, they take on projects that have a grand scope, they make choices that seem radical, and they carve out a new path that leads them into uncharted territory. We often watch in awe, preventing ourselves from taking the same leaps.

Consider Sandra Cook, who has successfully stretched the boundaries and challenged all traditional assumptions as she crafted amazing adventures for herself. The beginning of Sandra’s career snapped into place like clockwork. She earned a PhD in mathematical logic, went off to the London School of Economics to study and then teach, came back to the United States to work at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), took a job as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, and eventually headed up strategy for the communications businesses for Motorola. She could have continued on this path for the rest of her career, but decided to jump out of this perfectly good airplane because it was heading in the wrong direction.

Sandra’s passion has always been adventurous travel to wild and remote places, and she managed to squeeze exotic trips to India, Tibet, Mongolia, and Nepal into two-week stints during her busy work schedule. But she eventually decided this wasn’t enough, and so flipped her world on its head by quitting her prestigious job at Motorola in 2002 in order to travel in Afghanistan more extensively. The country was in shambles after the war began, and she wanted to help in any way she could. She got a visa, purchased an airline ticket, and went, hoping to find some way to make a difference. When she got off the plane in Kabul, there were no taxis and little infrastructure in place. With some effort, she found her way to a hotel frequented by reporters from around the world, and got to work contacting everyone she could to find out how she could get involved with the effort to rebuild the country. She offered to write grants, to prepare business plans, or even to sweep floors—whatever would be helpful.

Sandra eventually connected with Nancy Dupree, the director of the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University. Nancy was working tirelessly to rebuild the university library and to get books into the hands of people throughout the country through their Box Library Extension. After they got to know each other a little better, Sandra wrote a business plan for the center and was eventually asked to serve on the organization’s board of directors. She is now co-president of the board and spends most of her time building awareness of and raising money for this organization. Besides her official duties, Sandra also takes on grassroots projects in Afghanistan, such as distributing pomegranate trees throughout the city of Kabul. She personally purchased twenty thousand bare-root trees and handed them out to families so they could start replacing trees destroyed during the war.

Most people do not leave comfortable lives to tackle enormous problems in far-flung lands. But, in many cases, much smaller challenges seem just as daunting. For many, changing jobs or moving across town feels just as risky as traveling to an exotic location to perform relief work. It is much more comfortable to stay locked in a role that’s “good enough” than to reach for an alternative that has a higher degree of uncertainty. Most of us are content taking small, reliable steps. We don’t get very far, but we don’t rock the boat either.

Venture capital firms that invest in early stage businesses pride themselves on identifying big problems and taking significant risks with the goal of tackling them. They are always scanning the horizon for the next big opportunity, as opposed to looking for small problems with incremental solutions. They attempt to look into the future for challenges that are just beyond the next hill so they can invest in radically innovative approaches to meeting them head-on. A great example is Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a firm with a remarkable track record for predicting future challenges and investing in their solutions. They invested in biotechnology, Internet commerce, and alternative energy long before these were household topics, and they anticipated the future impact of businesses such as Genentech, Sun Microsystems, Amazon, Google, Netscape, Intuit, and Electronic Arts. As Randy Komisar, a partner at KPCB, notes, being entrepreneurial means seeing the world as opportunity rich. He and his colleagues have found that identifying and solving big problems leads to significant rewards for everyone involved.

Despite the fact that one can make a profit by solving big problems, Randy stresses in his book,
The Monk and the Riddle,
the importance of having the zeal to solve a grand problem, as opposed to being motivated to make money.
⁴
To explain the difference, he compares a missionary who passionately pursues an important cause to a mercenary whose drive is only to serve his or her own interests. By focusing on finding solutions to significant challenges with missionary-like energy, successful companies are born. This message is echoed by author Guy Kawasaki, who says it is better to “make meaning than to make money.”
⁵
If your goal is to make meaning by trying to solve a big problem in innovative ways, you are more likely to make money than if you start with the goal of making money, in which case you will probably not make money
or
meaning.

What do the entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and inventors described above have to do with the students who started with five dollars, paper clips, or water bottles and were challenged to create as much value as possible? A tremendous amount. All of these examples reinforce the idea that there is great benefit to identifying problems in your midst and then relentlessly working to solve them by challenging traditional assumptions. Problems are abundant, just waiting for those willing to find inventive solutions. This takes acute observation, coordinated teamwork, the ability to execute a plan, a willingness to learn from failure, and creative problem solving. But the first requirement is having the attitude that the problem can be solved. I have found, for myself and my students, that the more experience you have tackling problems, the more confident you become that you can find a solution.

I was recently in Scotland teaching in a weeklong entrepreneurship boot camp, run by James Barlow at the Scottish Institute for Enterprise, for fifty college students from across the country who were studying a wide range of disciplines, from criminology to cosmetics. Most of them had no exposure to entrepreneurship at all. At the beginning of the week, many were completely overwhelmed by the first assignment, which required them to come up with and then sell a new product or service. Each team was given fifty British pounds of starting capital at 6:00 p.m. and had a total of eighteen hours to complete the project. The goal was to get them out of their comfort zone and into the real world. Many of the students told me they were on the verge of going home. (They didn’t need to tell me this, because the panicked looks on their faces said it all.) But they all stuck with it and were pleasantly shocked by what they accomplished. One group became “umbrella walkers,” assisting those who got caught in the unexpected rain; one group set up an impromptu speed-dating station at a local bar; and one started a makeshift shoeshine stand on a busy downtown street.

But this assignment was just the beginning of their experience. By the end of a week’s worth of challenging activities, including scouring newspapers to identify problems, brainstorming to come up with creative solutions, designing new ventures, meeting with potential customers, filming commercials, and pitching their ideas to a panel of successful executives, they were ready to take on just about any challenge.

One team that stands out in my mind was composed of three young women, for whom all of this was brand-new. They were shaking in their shoes when the first assignment was given. By the end of the week, however, they had come up with a fabulous idea that earned high praise from the panel of judges as well as seed funding from investors. They developed a mobile, at-home service for bra fitting, based on their observation that most women are embarrassed by the process and often end up with ill-fitting bras. Their video commercial was tasteful and convinced everyone that this was an interesting opportunity.

On the last day of the workshop, one of the young women said to me, “I now know that there isn’t anything I can’t do.” She, along with all the other students, already had the bulk of the skills they needed to accomplish amazing things. All we offered them was tangible proof, along with a healthy dose of permission, that they could turn the problems around them into opportunities.

The famous psychologist B. F. Skinner once wrote that all human behavior can be viewed as being adaptive to either the individual, the gene pool, or to society at large.
¹
However, these three forces are often at odds, causing significant tension. The rules made by society are a huge presence in our lives, created by the government, religious groups, our employers, our schools, our neighbors, and our families. Because these social groups craft the explicit rules around us, we often find ourselves in situations where we are driven to break them to satisfy our personal desires or the drives of our species. These social rules and norms are designed to make the world around us more organized and predictable, and to prevent us from hurting one another.

But when is a rule really just a suggestion? And when do suggestions morph into rules? Every day, physical signs tell all of us what to do, written instructions direct us how to behave, and social guidelines urge us to act within specific parameters. In fact, we also make lots of rules for ourselves, in large part encouraged by others. These rules become woven into our individual fabric as we go through life. We draw imaginary lines around what we think we can do—lines that often limit us much more than the rules imposed by society at large. We define ourselves by our professions, our income, where we live, the car we drive, our education, and even by our horoscope. Each definition locks us into specific assumptions about who we are and what we can do. I’m reminded of a famous line from the movie
My Dinner with Andre,
that states that New Yorkers “are both guards and prisoners and as a result they no longer have…the capacity to leave the prison they have made, or even see it as a prison.” We always make our own prisons, with rules that we each create for ourselves, locking us into specific roles and out of an endless array of possibilities. What if you challenge the underlying assumptions? What are the consequences—good and bad—of getting off the prescribed path? What happens to those who break the rules?

Larry Page, co-founder of Google, gave a lecture in which he encouraged the audience to break free from established guidelines by having a healthy disregard for the impossible.
²
That is, to think as big as possible. He noted that it is often easier to have big goals than to have small goals. With small goals, there are very specific ways to reach them and more ways they can go wrong. With big goals, you are usually allocated more resources and there are more ways to achieve them. This is an interesting insight. Imagine that you are trying to get from San Francisco to Kabul. There are lots of different routes, you will likely give yourself the time and resources to get there, and you will be flexible if things don’t unfold as planned. But if your goal is to go across town, then the path is pretty clear and you expect it to be a quick trip. If the road is blocked for some reason, you are stuck and frustrated. One of the reasons Google has been so successful is their willingness to tackle hard problems with an undefined path to completion.

Linda Rottenberg is a prime example of a person who sees no problem as too big to tackle and readily breaks free of expectations in order to get where she wants to go. She believes that if others think your ideas are crazy, then you must be on the right track. Eleven years ago Linda started a remarkable organization called Endeavor.
³
Their goal is to foster entrepreneurship in the developing world. She launched Endeavor just after graduating from Yale Law School, with little more than a passion to stimulate economic development in disadvantaged regions. She stopped at nothing to reach her goals, including “stalking” influential business leaders whose support she needed.

Endeavor began its efforts in Latin America and has since expanded to other regions of the world, including Turkey and South Africa. They go through a rigorous process to identify high-potential entrepreneurs and, after selecting those with great ideas and the drive to execute their plan, give them the resources they need to be successful. The entrepreneurs are not handed money, but instead are introduced to those in their environment who can guide them. They are also provided with intense educational programs, and get an opportunity to meet with other entrepreneurs in their region who have navigated the circuitous path before. Once successful, they serve as positive role models, create jobs in their local communities, and, eventually, give back to Endeavor, helping future generations of entrepreneurs.

An inspiring example of an Endeavor entrepreneur is Leila Velez in Brazil. Leila lived in the slums in the hills overlooking Rio de Janiero, known as
favelas.
Cleaning houses, she survived on a subsistence income. However, she had an idea: there are many women in Brazil who want desperately to have softer, less kinky hair. Leila, along with her sister-in-law Heloisa Assis, invented a product that transforms knotty hair into curly hair. It took years of trial-and-error experimentation, resulting in many extreme failures along the way, but once she found a solution, she opened a salon in Rio. Her business was brisk and Leila had the fantasy of creating a franchise. Along came Endeavor, which helped her realize her dream. This business, called Beleza Natural, now employs a thousand people and earns millions in annual revenue.

This is but one of hundreds of success stories from Endeavor. I was at Endeavor’s biannual summit two years ago and was overwhelmed with the energy and enthusiasm in the room. Each entrepreneur was indebted to Endeavor for providing the tools they needed, as well as the inspiration to succeed. This would never have happened if Linda had listened to those who told her that her ideas were crazy.

One of the biggest obstacles to taking on “impossible tasks” is that others are often quick to tell you they can’t be accomplished. It is arguably tough to address a grand problem. But once you decide to take it on, it is equally hard to break out of traditional approaches to solving it. This is another place where it is helpful to break a few rules. The next exercise forces people to do this in a surprising way. First, come up with a problem that is relevant for the particular group. For example, if it is a group of executives in the utility business, the topic might be getting companies to save energy; if it is a theater group, the problem might be how to attract a larger audience; and if it is a group of business students, the challenge might be to come up with a cool, new business idea. Break the group into small teams and ask each one to come up with the best idea and the worst idea for solving the stated problem.
⁴
The best idea is something that each team thinks will solve the problem brilliantly. The worst idea will be ineffective, unprofitable, or will make the problem worse. Once they are done, they write each of their ideas on a separate piece of paper, one labeled BEST and one labeled WORST. When I do this exercise, I ask participants to pass both to me, and I proceed to shred the BEST ideas. After the time they spent generating these great ideas, they are both surprised and not too happy.

I then redistribute the WORST ideas. Each team now has an idea that another team thought was terrible. They are instructed to turn this bad idea into a fabulous idea. They look at the horrible idea that was passed their way and quickly see that it really isn’t so bad after all. In fact, they often think it is terrific. Within a few seconds someone always says, “Hey, this is a great idea!”

When doing this exercise with a utility company, one of the “worst ideas” for saving energy was to give each employee a quota for how much energy he or she used and to charge extra for exceeding the allotment. They thought this was a pretty silly idea. The team that received this idea turned it into an idea that is really worth considering, in which employees
do
have a quota for how much energy they use. If they use less they get money back, and if they use more they are charged for it. They could even sell energy credits to their co-workers, giving them an even larger incentive to save electricity.

I did this exercise with the staff responsible for putting on arts events at Stanford. One of the teams charged with finding ways to bring in a larger audience came up with the “bad” idea of putting on a staff talent show. This is seemingly the opposite of what they do now—bringing in top-notch talent from around the world. The next team turned this idea upside down. They interpreted this much more broadly and proposed a big fund-raiser, where the faculty and staff across the university would showcase their diverse talents. This would very likely bring in lots of people who don’t normally go to performing arts events and would help build awareness for their other programs.

When the challenge was to come up with the worst business idea, the suggestions were boundless. One group suggested selling bikinis in Antarctica, one recommended starting a restaurant that sells cockroach sushi, and one group proposed starting a heart attack museum. In each of these cases, these bad ideas were transformed into pretty interesting ideas that deserved some real consideration. For example, the group that was tasked with selling bikinis in Antarctica came up with the slogan “Bikini or Die.” Their idea was to take people who wanted to get into shape on a trip to Antarctica. By the end of the hard journey, they would be able to fit into their bikinis. The group that needed to sell cockroach sushi came up with a restaurant called La Cucaracha that made all sorts of exotic sushi using nontraditional but nutritious ingredients and targeted adventurous diners. The group given the challenge of starting a heart attack museum used this idea as the starting point for a museum devoted entirely to health and preventative medicine. All groups came up with compelling business names, slogans, and commercials for these ventures.

This exercise is a great way to open your mind to solutions to problems because it demonstrates that most ideas, even if they look silly or stupid on the surface, often have at least a seed of potential. It helps to challenge the assumption that ideas are either good or bad, and demonstrates that, with the right frame of mind, you can look at most ideas or situations and find something valuable. For example, even if you don’t start the “Bikini or Die” excursion to Antarctica, this is an interesting starting point for ideas that might be more practical.

My old buddy John Stiggelbout used the idea of turning a good idea on its head when applying to graduate school. He did something that any normal person would think was a terribly bad idea, and it turned out to be inspired. He decided at the last minute that he wanted to go to business school. Having missed all the deadlines, he chose to make his application stand out among the others in an unconventional way. Instead of touting his impressive accomplishments, as most applicants do, he augmented his traditional application with a letter of reference written by a past professor claiming to be John’s best friend and cell mate in prison. The letter described John in the most unusual terms that any admissions committee had ever seen, including his ability to open a mason jar with his belch. Instead of knocking John out of the running, those in the admissions office were incredibly curious to meet him and invited John to visit the school. John was nice enough to dig up the letter so you can see it, too.

I met John Stiggelbout as a fellow Greyhound bus passenger. He must have passed out on the floor at the back. I found him next to a Styrofoam cup and a candy wrapper, covered with cigarette butts, holding an empty MD 20/20 bottle. I am his best friend. We were cell mates after we got caught robbing the 7/11.

After a hearty meal at the Salvation Army, we once went to a revival meeting where we were both trying to pick up the same girl. (He takes defeat and humiliation well; he is obviously a practiced loser.)

He has impressive qualities that any struggling Junior Achievement Company or small family laundry could put to good use. He covers his brown and yellow teeth when he yawns, and opens the window when he spits. He can whistle loud using his fingers, and can crack a mason jar with his burp. He showers once a month. He uses soap when he can.

He needs a place so he doesn’t have to sleep in the bus station restroom. He needs to find a position with a large company where his heavy drinking and sexual preference for exotic birds will not get him fired the first day on the job.

Anyone with a sexual preference for exotic birds is both original and independent of thought. In fact, he is so independent of thought that he is utterly devoid of it.

This guy will do anything for a drink. He may even work.

Now that Stiggs is out of jail, I’m sure his parole officer would not mind if some graduate school looked after him for a bit. He is a great leader in the Hells Angels, and all the boys I talked to thought he would make a hell of a white collar criminal.

Of all the people I have found on the floor, passed out in the back of a bus, this guy is the best.

My overall impression is that he is not as good as I make him out to be. Get me out of jail so that I can go to Chicago instead of him.

Buford T. Morton, Inmate #335342

Walla Walla Federal Penitentiary

Walla Walla, Washington

Once John arrived for the interview, everyone in the office was peeking out of his or her doors, hoping to get a look at the fellow who submitted the wild application. He was polite and poised during his interview, and was admitted.

The concept that there are no bad ideas is a hallmark of good brainstorming. During a brainstorming session it is important to explicitly state that there are no bad ideas. You need to break with the assumption that ideas need to be feasible in order to be valuable. By encouraging people to come up with wild ideas you diffuse the tendency to edit your ideas before you share them. Sometimes the craziest ideas, which seem impractical when they are initially proposed, turn out to be the most interesting in the long run. They might not work in their first iteration, but with a bit of massaging, they might turn out to be brilliant solutions that are feasible to implement.