What will you do differently?
Three things I’m taking with me and three things I’m leaving behind after the GSB.
We’re graduating and now it’s time to make sense of what the hell just happened to us over the last two years. Can I offer some thoughts on the matter? Will you indulge me with the luxury of reflection if I promise not to be too cliché?
I ask because most graduation reflections are painfully predictable: your education has transformed you into a new human being capable of conquering any feat. Climb every mountain! Oh the places you’ll go! And so on.
This one has some of that for sure. But it’s also a reflection about how our education might have changed us in ways that won’t lead to a more elevated self or world. Graduation is the right time to grapple with that kind of change too, and celebrating one without acknowledging the other would cheapen the totality of this experience.
In the winter, I took Tom Wurster’s course called “Insight to Outcome” where we studied leaders who made big mistakes and failed. In his last lecture he asked, “Now that you’ve spent the time learning about how to not be these people, what will you do differently?”
What will you do differently?
This is an offshoot of a question I love to ask at opportunities for rebirth, like New Year’s or birthdays: “what’s one thing you’re taking forward into the next year and one thing you’re leaving behind?” This is the framework that I’m using to make sense of what the GSB has meant to me.
After these two precious, wild, fun, frustrating, and challenging years, what will I do differently? I have three things that I’m taking forward and three things that I hope to leave behind.
Taking with me: Just do it.
The first is a nod to our school’s most esteemed benefactor: just do it. Just start it — whatever “it” is — and do it today, not tomorrow. One of the reasons I came to the GSB was that I saw it as a kind of experimental lab. Before I set foot on campus, I made a list of things I wanted to do but never worked up the courage to try. Run for office. Start something from scratch. Perform on stage. Fall in love.
In two years, I ran for SA, created this magazine, performed in the Show, and gave my number to some guy at the Patio. I watched myself cross those goals off at a frantic clip after spending 25 years eyeing them tentatively. The only regret that I have for anything I’ve done at the GSB is that I didn’t start doing it sooner.
What is it about these two years that makes us feel like we have a license for reinvention? I think it’s being surrounded by 400 mad scientists with a twinkle in their eye and a determination to find and explore new frontiers. I felt emboldened by watching the people around me try new things, start new ventures and become new versions of themselves. Even if that newness never calcified into permanence, the fact that we believed enough in ourselves to engage in the simple bravery of beginning is a type of rare magic I’ve yet to find elsewhere. One thing I’ll do differently is to bottle that bravery and continue to use it as an accelerant to convince me to just start, do it early, and never look back.
Leaving behind: The GSBubble.
Being surrounded by 400 mad scientists is a double edged sword: on one hand it gave me consent to strive for a better version of myself, and on the other hand it created the illusion that the most important people in the world are all here, within arm’s reach.
However: this place is not real life. And that’s inevitably part of its charm, the fact that free food and funding flow from a never-ending spigot, that truly brilliant people are answering questions that will forever advance mankind and that we have a chance to be a part of it. But if you spend too much time here you start to see the world not as a kaleidoscope of different values, beliefs and behaviors, but as a monolithic solar system with the center of its orbit firmly implanted in Silicon Valley, USA.
Whatever it is we decide to do next, we can’t do it well if we confine ourselves to the neatly drawn corner of society we’ve lived in for the last two years. The problems we choose to solve are informed by our surroundings, and that environment is increasingly homogenous: white, rich and the educated elite. We have a moral and ethical obligation to find ways to introduce heterogeneity into this environment and the world will be better off if we share the bounty we’ve grown accustomed to far and wide, not just close to home. Bursting the bubble and challenging ourselves through the unfamiliar allows us to understand the world much better than we ever could by simply living among a reflection of ourselves.
Taking with me: Look for more no’s.
Looking for more no’s means searching for non-consensus and fighting for the things that nobody else believes in. Before school I thought consensus was the North Star to work toward as a leader; ideas that everyone believed are better because they adhere to conventional wisdom, have a precedent for success, and are easier to rally a team around.
Two years later, I realize that consensus often precludes the possibility of doing anything innovative or interesting. Consensus is consensus because it’s been done before, not because it’s any good. I learned this lesson best by watching classmates pursue big ideas in spaces where conventional wisdom cautions they’ll fail, and being undaunted by the challenges ahead.
Looking for no’s means learning to love the discomfort of non-consensus. When people disagree, it’s often because something big is at stake. When people say “No, that won’t work,” it’s often because they haven’t been shown a better way to do it. That juncture of high stakes and unchartered territory is where we’ll do our best work and have the biggest impact along the way.
Leaving behind: Avoiding saying the uncomfortable things out loud.
If I’ve grown more comfortable looking for non-consensus in my career, I’ve become more averse to conflict everywhere else. One thing I’d like to do differently from my two years at the GSB is to learn to say the uncomfortable things out loud.
The GSB is a warm and collegial community, but we often sacrifice authenticity in order to maintain that collegiality. There were times when I sat in class, listened to comments that ran opposite to my personal values, and stayed quiet. I didn’t want to be labeled as angry or negative, lots of terms that are often applied to people with my complexion and an outspoken voice. I considered it self-preservation; winning the affection of my classmates was paramount, even if it required rolling over and remaining silent.
But I now know that playing small is cowardice, not self-preservation. Staying silent isn’t about earning respect — it’s about avoiding the awkward march toward admitting that you and I might have different values. And here’s where living in a monolith rears its ugly head again: it’s OK if we don’t all believe in the same thing. What’s not OK is creating cultural norms that make the stakes for self-expression too high. The world needs our activism, not our abstinence, and we have a responsibility to learn how to say the uncomfortable things out loud — not just in hushed conversations in private rooms among the people who agree with us, but out in the open in full view.
Taking with me: The power of optimism.
Optimism doesn’t mean a sunny disposition in the face of conflict or challenges. Optimism can’t be reduced to platitudes about seeing glasses half full or half empty because it’s far more complex than just an outlook on the future.
Optimism is the relentless belief that tomorrow can and will be better than today, but it’s also the magic ingredient in the recipe for resilience, the durable material from which toughness is made. Optimism is the cousin of gratitude, especially for people like us who have been given so much : who are we not to wish, hope and dream of something sweeter than the status quo? Optimism is one of our greatest assets because it requires us to choose tomorrow, and to look forward with heads raised instead of brows beaten.
It wasn’t the languid Californian sun or wine-soaked small group dinners that left us intoxicated over the last two years. The core of our cheerful haze was being surrounded by people who decided to choose optimism above all else. That’s what made each precious day feel like we were floating on hallowed ground and like every new sunrise was conspiring with fate to bring us good fortune.
We don’t have to come down from that high. Wherever we go, we can choose positive vibes and surround ourselves with people who give us energy rather than take it away from us. We can be critical, discerning, sad, angry or disappointed, but we can also still choose to believe that our best is yet to come.
Leaving behind: The disinterest for what can’t be scaled.
Business school indoctrinated us with the #growthmindset — hockey stick graphs, extensible platforms, and the need for defensibility all suggest the same thing: if you can’t scale it, it’s probably not worth your time.
For the final two assignments in Lives of Consequence this quarter, Professor Rod Kramer asked us each to write our own obituary and eulogy. Many of us wrote about building world-changing businesses, managing large companies, running for office, and becoming financially successful. Our quest for far-reaching impact, he said, has been a constant throughout the 20 years he’s taught the class at the GSB.
But those obituaries stood in stark contrast to our eulogies, which seldom included career accomplishments. Instead, they revolved around family and friends, savoring life’s most precious moments, and the way we wanted to make the people around us feel: loved, appreciated and cared for. For so many outwardly ambitious people, the core of our legacy was not world domination but rather cultivating the small plot of land nearest to us by leaving those who know us best better off because of it.
There is tremendous grace in that which can not be scaled because those things represent what is most rare and meaningful in life. There is no algorithm (yet) for personal connection or efficient frontier for creativity. Automation and distribution networks be damned — we should be satisfied, and even seek out, those things that require our personal touch, a resource that can’t be manufactured anywhere else on earth. I could start a non-profit that helps millions, or I could mentor one person and change their life for the better. I could turn my side-hustle into a booming business, or I could allow myself to languish in a labor of love with no agenda for greatness. Both choices are OK, but I don’t want to allow the supposed prestige of the former to blind me to the beauty of the latter.
These three things I’m taking with me — starting early and often, looking for more no’s, and seeing optimism as a core strength, and these three things that I’m leaving behind — the GSBubble, a fear of saying the uncomfortable things out loud, and disinterest in that which can’t be scaled — is what I plan to do differently after this maddeningly brief but indulgent two years.
