TO: COUSINS & NEPHEWS & NEICES
FR: VASOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS
RE: GENERAL ADVICE
DT: JAN02 (ORIG:AUG88)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LESSONS FROM LIFE OF VASOS FOR FARAWAY COUSINS AND OTHER SILLY PROVERBS
Appearance opens doors, but only value enters. They buy what they,not you,want.
We become what we believe we are. When the mind is ready, a teacher appears.
Who asks is fool for now, but who does not ask remains fool forever.
Don't celebrate closing a sale, celebrate opening a relationship.
You have to earn the right to do business with people.
Marketing must be ongoing, consistent, relentless, shameless.
It is not who you know, but wants know you & never has chance forget you.
To question you don't want to answer, smile, ask, "Why you want to know?"
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
To get the right answer you have to ask the right question.
Knowledge and secrecy are temporary - use them quickly.
Our deeds are never forgotten nor long secret.
"No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar" (Abr. Lincoln)
Excusing lies to yourself makes you believe lies of others.
Reddened face shows emotion but pale shows fear.
Those who feel they might give in seek pain to absolve them.
Large groups have less than one brain.
A team is not equal in experience, talent, or education but in commitment.
Mathematics is lazy oversimplification, thus useful. Info is dear, data cheap
Experience is from arrogant lack of knowledge.
Every day learns from the one before, but none teaches tomorrow.
Fate isn't what happens whatever you do, it is if you don't do.
Be Optimistic, Objective, Deliberate, Determined
Give people more than they expect, and do it cheerfully.
First honesty, then industry, then concentration (Andrew Carnegie)
When you focus on what might have been, it gets in the way of what can be.
Ignorance and poverty are from arrogance. Prepare for good,not just bad,days.
Unlucky wouldn't know luck if fell from sky, quarrel with their tools.
Afraid of bad luck will never know good. Asking faintly begs denial.
He that cannot abide a bad market deserves not a good one.
If fate sends you a lemon, make lemonade.
Single hand cannot wash itself even in river.
Work Ethic: calling, use of gifts, idleness is evil
We have to do the best we can.. sacred human responsibility. - Alb Einstein
As horse must eat at rest so wealth comes not from regular income.
Learning to learn and yet admit total ignorance is ultimate knowledge.
Listen to taped notes seven times before exam.
NEVER sleep less than six or more than seven continuous hours a day;
Too much makes you greedy, too little and you forget what you're doing.
Forgeting is psychological hidding, not physical - doesn't exist.
Our short term memory only holds about five items.
Reading makes a full man,meditation a profound, discourse a clear man.
Taking lecture notes is more useful than rereading them.
Tension accumulates in neck, so trace it from root, will it free along path.
Best ideas come randomly so have paper always ready.
Eraser is most important writing utensil.
Most of book is ignorable egoboosting jargon - focus past it in 2hrs.
You can do and learn much more when you are young.
Independently reproduce results to check them.
Higher intelligence accompanies higher sensitivity to everything.
Variety is the true test and teacher of intelligence.
Subconsciously cultivate thoughts - sleep on it.
Exploit your moods - don't fight them. Schedule thought time.
Learning involves:overview,plan,read,organise,extract,practice,review.
So as to not interrupt a meeting - write it down.
Discipline your life but never your thoughts.
Wait, stall, think - everything becomes an opportunity. Act quick,think slow.
Procrastination is but neurotic perfectionism. Speed&accuracy are tradeoffs.
Sanity and progress are mutually exclusive. Improve everything.
Make original mistakes by learning from others. Learn to say "I don't know"
Most use their minds a few minutes a week, genius a few hours.
Doing, not trying to be, achieves. TV tells peasants not ashamed be lazy.
Riskaverseness, poverty and slavery are synonymous. Sitting is being crippled.
Quantifying helps put theories in perspective.
Explore, confirm reality, develop conflicting sources, test-market ideas.
Personal contacts & experiences shape thinking.
Be prepared for all contingencies - no second chances.
You can't plan - but you can be strategically opportunistic.
Those who do not care what others think are followed as leaders.
Singlemindedness is key to material pursuits but enemy of intellect.
Will - tempered by realism and judgement - shapes history.
Think you can. Every mistake is a lesson. Admit mistakes, rectify quickly.
Secret of being is not only to live but something to live for. - Dostoyevsky
The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little. - Thos Merton
The meek lamb suckles from two mothers.
We can have it all, but not at the same time.
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,
but what is woven into the lives of others. - Pericles
Writing it down or putting in in its place keeps you from worrying.
Preserve options. Deliver bad news because others won't.
Learn to tolerate flak and persevere. Uncriticised=Inactive.
Detecting what's missing is harder than seeing what's there.
Everyone is expendible, esp you. Be able to resign - improves your perfrmnce.
Today's enemy may be tomorrow's ally - don't build resentments.
Don't say things you would not want repeated.
If you get the objectives right, lieutenant can write strategy (Gen Marshall)
Planning is everything, the plan is nothing (Ike)
Persuasion is a two-edged sword,pathos&logos, to be plunged deeply
In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking.
Don't let "urgent" overpower "important". If coasting, going downhill.
Intellectual Capital is the least fungible kind.
All fall but are distinguished by energy and dignity with which continue.
Let God avenge you - He's better at it. Empathy builds self-awareness.
That cheater might be Christ testing your charity.
Avoid arrogant twisted notions of worldly ways that force us to do
unnecessarily sneaky and therefore stupid things in name of good.
All grandiose ideas generalised from personal grudges; Relocalising defuses.
Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.
Exploit that you'll unavoidably totally resemble your parents.
Marriage judged by its children. Every child born with breadloaf in mouth.
Exploit, don't fight, preconceptions.
Real friendship is unhesitatingly tolerated mutual exploitation.
Friendship won simultaneously by flower & sword - neither respected alone.
Defend your supporters to prove you deserve them.
Coldly punishing an enemy can keep friends from straying.
Admonish friends in private, praise in public. Angry man not fit to pray.
Virtue never dwells alone, always has neighbours.
Benevolents allow faults in themselves so as to countenance friends.
Character&Friendship are much easier kept than recovered.
Too much discussion means a quarrel. Too much laughter discovers folly.
The most dangerous enemy is one with nothing to lose.
Replace a distraction by a more complicated distraction.
To control anger:laugh at self, learn to delegate, work out, ID true source.
Anger is frustration at inability to control and of unrealistic expectations
Label feelings not people;Distngsh from thoughts & take respnsblty for them
Show respect for other people's feelings and your own potentl rxns.
Channel/reframe anger, fear, oth neg feelings into productive action.
Turn your anger against itself - be angry at anger.
Moods transfer: Avoid people who invalidate, disrespect, invade or negative
Know when to back off, else flooded emotions revert to primitive.
Inability to express or understand feelings causes disruptive conflicts.
Cross hands over breastbone to suppress passions in breathing.
If someone screams, it's because you made him think.
People stop yelling if you CALMLY but firmly whisper.
Tempers are cured by harsh realism.
If you smile on the phone, it will be noticed.
Isolation and illogical, unpredictable events bring introversion.
Put words in their mouths with questions. Silence makes other guy talk.
If they are first asked questions to which they know not the answers,
they really open up to the ones they know.
When interrogating, be sure there is consistency in attitude in order
to detect deception, also check whatever possible;
Pressure should be slackened as rapport is granted.
Complaining steals problemsolving time. Principles hide egos.
Condemning people keeps you from learning from them.
Morons "express feelings", "need space" and "can't concentrate"
while leaders "stay cool under pressure"
Acknwledging existence of negative behavior may encourage to expand.
Ideology/fanaticism/perfectionism/principles cause most heinous of crimes.
Adherence to simple ideas is the source of all bitterness.
Simplicity is laziness. Silent fools look wise. Hear much, speak little.
"They say so" is half a lie. Courage, like muscle, strengthened by use.
Cross the river in a crowd and the crocodile won't eat you.
Most megaconspiracies exist only by the hypocritical consent of victims.
A long speech takes no preparation, but a short one needs much.
Never attribute to malice that explainable by stupidity.
Wealthy mouth leftist platitudes to appease servants they depend on,
unlike middle class who encounter neither extreme.
Observe your enemies, for they first find your faults.
Of all the strategems, to know when to quit is the best.
He that commits a fault thinks everyone speaks of it.
He who excuses himself, accuses himself.
If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad.
Envy shoots at others, and wounds herself.
Fool's tongue is long enough to cut his own throat.
GOD gives the milk, but not the pail.
Genius has limits but stupidity doesn't.
Maintaining a complicated life is a great way to avoid changing it.
Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
People avoid fighting you if they think you're insane.
Unwritten promises are worthless. Shared ownership is destructive,neglected.
Partner in the business will not put an obstacle to it.
Tell only as need but ask everything. Find better-than-you as examples.
Fearful respect is greatest obstacle to communicating with superiors.
Those who knew you best yesterday know you least today.
He who lives with an ass, makes noises like an ass.
Hour in the morning is worth two in the evening.
Learn by repeating - never originating or changing - gossip.
There's no fun in physics, but a good deal of physics in fun.
Those in machinery of power take no joy except in whirring of machine.
Compliments come from people too lazy to be like you, to make you lazy too.
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do
because they want to do it. Ike
Choose best peple (brains, character) & leave them alone.
Forced obedience causes hidden inobedience. Give - don't get - ulcers.
Lovingly familial disapproval is more dangerous than anger.
In disagreements with loved ones, deal with the current situation.
Most people need to follow someone - let it be you.
Don't be penny wise, pound foolish - many costs hidden. You get what pay for.
To make more money, you have to spend more first.
Only the rich can afford to keep replacing cheap things.
If it costs more to store and find than buy, thow it away.
Industry is fortune's right hand, and frugality her left.
One cannot both feast and become rich.
Cheap/sloppy briefcase noticed, but good one gets you noticed instead.
You can accomplish much if you don't care who gets the credit.
Machines can do work of many ordinary men but of no extraordinary man.
Science is seeing as others but thinking as none before.
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity
of imagination. - John Dewey
Seeking security brings failure but seeking opportunity brings security.
Progress' risks are like running on a razor's edge: If you stop to look,
think, or panic - you fall!
TO: COUSINS
FR: VASOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS
RE: CAREERS AND EDUCATION
DT: 23DEC88 (ORIG: MAY88)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In May, 1988, I called some old classmates and noticed some trends:
Economic need chooses our specialisation more than any inspiration on our
part. All my engineer friends worked in computer programming regardless of
education area or level. Most my business school friends likewise worked in
investment banking and make ten times what the engineers do. The worst
students are now the richest. Most went into the same kind of business as
some close family member. There now exist computer programs that replace me
in doing most of what I learned in engineering school. Technical knowledge
depreciates by half every five to seven years, while human knowledge
appreciates in value. It is also worth noting that the greatest
technological achievements came not from doing and extending one specialised
area, but from combining several, otherwise-unrelated areas.
The point on being replaced by a computer indicates that if you do not
study Ariopaytis (we know from what we don't know), Aristotle (socialism
didn't work two millenia ago, nobody washes a rented car), Bach, Bastiat
(socialism didn't work two centuries ago), Beethoven, Burke (traditions are
society's memory), Confucius, Descartes, Dostoevsky (evil is arrogance),
Homer, Jefferson, Machiavelli (half actions don't work, maintain virtue so
that occasional unvirtuous but needed brutality may be excused),
Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Solomon, Theotokopulos, and de Tocqueville (slavery
and artificial respect breed laziness) - you will not learn to understand the
human spirit - ANTHROPOGHNOSIA! The traditional philosophies, literature and
religions of both the West and the East emphasise the theme that much of the
world's misery is the product of lives dominated too much by the passions of
greed, selfcenteredness, childish resentment, hypocrisy or dependency. My
professors said we had to learn about great art was so that we may be
motivated to earn high enough salaries to own it! Similarly, my engineering
professors would talk about a subject and then say "You just have to know
this exists, because you are all going to be managers and have other people
do it for you!" Indeed, we were told that our Columbia education was
intended to make us leaders, generalists, never specialists. Technical
knowledge is just something insecure petty peasants masturbate with -
educated people are meant to kick, not lick, other peoples' behinds! But
also, acquiring historical and philosophical perspective allows us to see old
evils that reappear with new pseudo-modern faces.
Moreover, in career and marriage - you must chose the one you cannot
live without, not just any one you can live with: this is because the energy
you put into your job, and the success you receive, is proportional to how
much you like what you are doing. One good way to measure this is to see what
courses you have done best in, and what different combinations of these
courses you would be comfortable with. If you draw well, and you live in a
country where textiles is one of the three largest industries, then maybe
clothing design is your field; Yet, if your sister is studying public
relations and your cousin marketing, you might consider advertising
(creative, not strategic) or political cartoons. But you should never choose
a career just to make your family happy - else you will also hate your family
if you hate your job!
I was also surprised when Columbia's (job) placement director, Mrs.
Athena Constantine, told me most jobs are obtained not via degree or
specialisation but via acquaintances of family, faculty, or associations;
Such acquantances are better work quality indicators than grades or degrees!
Some might say this maintains existing class divisions - but only in the
sence that some people are unwilling to abandon their pennywise poundfoolish
peasant psychological baggage and reform to a higher class work environment.
Huh? I have met super-wealthy computer programmers weighing two hundred
kilograms who spend their money collecting and displaying five hundred
different kinds of fried potato chips - excluding those affixed to their
periphery of course. I have met people who obtained several advanced degrees
and then opened grocery stores. I once helped fire a sweet little character
(a very religious Orthodox Jew) who could never do anything without detailed
directions and whose purpose at work was how he could describe his
achievements to his Babylonian Jewish peasant maternal grandmother - never
mind that his Austrian father was a university professor; the poor guy more
resembled a frightened rabbit that an educated human being. DEGREES ARE
MEANINGLESS COMPARED TO HUMAN INTERACTIONS, and these are LEARNED IN THE
FAMILY, not the university! This is also why classical American universities
require a broad general education - to educate the spirit - prior to
mind-educating specialisation. High quality workers must be able to think
beyond rhetorical claptrap, and must be able to create and adapt values, not
just parrot them.
Top Lessons From Vasos' Parents
Better Ecclectic than Greedy
Won't Know If Won't Go
Sneakiness in Compensation for Stupidity
Jump, Don't Kick, The Obstacle
Persistence Accumulates
Abrasiveness is Honesty
Intellect Demand Integrity
TO: COLUMBIA ENGINEERING STUDENTS
FR: VASOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS
RE: CAREER ADVICE
DT: JAN89 (ORIG: FEB86)
- What to major in
Would be surprised how little this matters
Some of my acquaintances
PhD Aeroelasticity makes IBM PC clones
MS/BS Indust Engr imports oriental rugs
MS Mech Engr became Admiral and imports factory machinery
MS OR became VP MIS
The two most important career determinants are
What your family does and has connections in
some things you just learn by osmosis, you can't avoid it
eg, if father is waiter - work for a food processor
What the current technological wave is
ie, today everything involves (most my classmates)
o computers
o investment banking (really only NYC industry)
- How prepare for real world
Learn to compete with your classmates and ignore faculty theories
Learn teamwork on class group projects
Make networks, meet people, go to high-class NYC parties
Ivy League ideal for meeting future leaders
But probably enjoying humanities not slaving over tech
People move - even get their grandma's summer address!
Professors too busy with tenure and grants to be of any real use
DO NOT work for a university unless want spend rest of life there
The side (not main) line of your college job will have more to
do with your first job than your major
ie, if automate bookstore or lab - job in computers
As soon as something becomes general knowledge,loses commercial advantage
People skills survive when tech obsolete
Market oriented; study motivations
People know you listen/care/followthru
Need driven, not technology driven
Most people undirected, naturally follow you
I'm-an-expert ego-trap
don't show off by adding unnecessary complexities
Fearful respect = greatest obstacle to communicating with superiors
Techies spend 70% of their time communicating
Learn how learn: Books/Colleagues/Experts ( F O C U S !! )
Pick unwilling expert's brain by rephrase question
Force to tell bottom line - focus meetings
Read advanced book in unknown topic in two hours!
Focus - ignore meaningless egoboosting jargon
Find all implications - simple more robust
Read backwards, contents table, speed read
Honest prosper - somebody always remembers
Politics players untrusted/ignored in crisis
Best ideas always come randomly - have paper with you
Sanity and progress mutually exclusive - PLAY !!!
- Graduate school
If likely forget too much, do it now
If really that interested, you already did 50% MS courses before BS
If you have ANY uncertainties, get a job first
Especially if family has no corporate experience to model decisions on
- Small vs. large vs. own firm
Most big firms are dead meat - takeover/LBO/breakup targets
There are almost no openings in big firms today
Small firms are wave of the future but less job security
Computer technology eliminates economy of scale (ie big firms)
But means have to send out a lot more resumes, also networking
people who graduate before you that you met in advanced courses
I always ended up working (4x/5yrs) for CU alum, even unknowingly!
The future job will really be a telecommuting subcontractor (self!)
Use, don't buy - to stay flexible - strategic opportunism
World changing: Third Industrial Revolution ! Information Age !
- Becoming a superstar
Do something you really enjoy, not because of money
If enjoy job, you naturally give your best
If don't know what want ("Just make lotsa money, I guess")
You'll always be a step behind in a rat race
TO: COUSINS
FR: VASOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS
DT: 10MAR89
RE: HOW TO STUDY
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPEEDREADING: Just underlining what your read with your finger doubles your
reading speed - you were right and your first grade teacher was wrong. After
a while, force yourself to read faster by increasing the speed of your
finger, so your eye muscles will gradually develop. Most people read two
hundred words per minute, a good speed reading course should bring you up by
five times, and a superexpert can come up to fifteen times. It also helps if
you scan what you are about to read to get an idea how it is structured so
your mind knows where it is going - rather than wander endlessly.
MEMORY: Actually, we never forget anything. We psychologically hide things
that bring us painful or otherwise unpleasant memories. Start to understand
this by looking at pictures of your past and trying to remember more - first
last year, then grammar school. Your memory has improved well if you can
remember from age three, but some people can remember things their mothers
said when they were in her belly.
TIME: You have to learn to discipline your time. Start by planning each
three hour study period at its start. Break your time down to fifteen minute
intervals and plan a simplified ask for each, but leave the last fifteen
minutes in each hour for catching up on what you didn't finish. Eventually,
you will learn how you work and be better able to schedule entire days and
later weeks. Remember to be realistic and to break your task down to doable
portions. As your courses become more complicated, you will schedule hours
instead of quarters. Learn to pace yourself so you can endure long tasks.
NOTES: Taking notes forces you to structure what you hear or read. It forces
you to use your motor skills and thusly involve more parts of your brain.
But take down what is important, don't mindlessly write every word, use your
mind to process the information. When you study your notes, underline what
is important or what you are unlikely to remember, and do this again with a
different color ink... it usually helps to review like this seven times. If
you have time, you can rewrite your notes to reorganise them, as long as you
force yourself to use half the space you originally used. If you have to
study something from a long time ago and it requires a lot of memorisation,
it may help to tape record your notes and listen to them a lot, even while
sleeping.
[What I tell interviewees about Columbia]
Columbia is the best university in the city that is the capital of
the world; But most capitals are so dazzled and busy with their facades, they
forget their back yards even exist. Columbia's main focus is research, not
teaching, but you DO learn: Often you learn most from your classmates;
because of competition: You could have the same textbook and professor in
another university, but you learn more at Columbia because you know your
classmates are going to study more, spend more time in the library or the
lab, learning something more interesting. In the end, the best thing a
college teaches you is how to teach yourself and how to reason critically;
Real genius isn't like an ordinary savant who becomes an expert in one field
then spends the rest of life with brain switched off, but instead can become
an expert in any field very quickly.
Ironically, Columbia was also a university where the deans felt more
of an obligation to connect with and be accessible to the parents more than
any university my friends attended: many of my professors and deans had kids
my age; indeed many times those kids were also my classmates. My first
semester, I felt I had been so cheated by all the watered-down courses I had
in high school, I felt like an insatiable tiger let loose at a
slaughterhouse; at the same time, they never let us off easy: if we had AP
credit, they made us take tougher courses instead of just giving us credit,
their attitude was we were better so we had to become even better. We were
often told getting in was the only hard part about Harvard, but staying in
was the hard part about Columbia; it was part of New York, the city that
never sleeps. Yet Columbia is the smallest of all the Ivies because real
estate is so expensive here: And we are said to be the least politically
correct, but we were also the least cohesive, at least after the 1968 riots,
when the university spent over a decade badly in debt and every department
was its own feudal domain; During those difficult times, I still had access
to the best traditions of Columbia through some of the professors,
particularly my mentor, whose obituary quoted me saying he taught us
"curiosity tempered by discipline, adventurousness tempered by modesty, and
kindness tempered by humility".
We used to joke that after standing in line at Columbia, you learned
how to navigate just about any bureaucracy in the future; but I found that
the Columbia bureacracy often made some incredibly sound decisions: I often
went back to see how they bought some equipment or incentivised some
contractor; I also cannot live without my Alumni Library Reading Card! But
at the same time Columbia has so demanding, and often needlessly overreacted,
we often felt so unsure of ourselves once we left: so much that one professor
told us that we should try to remember how we acted when we were kids and
really wanted something, in order to revive our more natural and
long-suppressed instincts; and they also told us our first two years on the
job would be spent recovering our self-confidence. They told us once that we
learned about art, music, philosophy and literature was so we would become so
hooked on expensive avocations we would be motivated to earn extraordinary
money just to afford them! (But seriously, by learning "old" things, you
avoid believing repackaged old fallacies.) Every boss I ever worked for had
some connection to Columbia, despite my not knowing this until long after I
was hired; Attending Columbia makes the world a very small place: I never
stop marvelling the places where I've been tapped on the shoulder and told
someone remembered me from Columbia; you can't escape!
Suggested Reading:
Any technical subject: McGrawHill Schaum Outlines (do ALL the problems)
Psychology: Oldham & Morris, Personality Self-Portrait
High-Powered Science Mind: "Surely You are Joking, Mr Feynman"
Another Super-Genius: Barry Farber "How to Learn ANY Language"
Humanities: Norton Anthologies
For math/sci/engr majors: visit mathcounts.org
ADVICE TO MBA STUDENTS NOV 2002
Two of the most honest and successful businessmen in America are
Columbia MBAs, Warren Buffett'51 (Berkshire Hathaway) and Ben Rosen'61
(Sevin, Osborne, Compaq, Lotus, Borland). Until he met his wife, the younger
George Bush wasn't a "good boy" like his father, but this knowledge makes the
younger a better president than his father. The unconscientious students
were more efficient with their time in the short run, they did exactly what
the professor expected and nothing more. They got the better grade, but the
more conscientious student went deeper and learned more, and benefited more
in the long run. Both are valuable. Both need each other. If you don't
survive the short run, you never make it to the long run; if you don't
understand the long run, it's really no use to survive the short run.
The best way to get hired is to meet and impress your future boss.
You do this by doing. Don't just sit on the sidelines looking for a job, but
act as if you have a job and try to do what the job requires, or else you'll
get rusty. Headhunters are value-destroyers because they are commoditisers
and niche-killers; Headhunters will turn you into a commodity, turn you over
so often, you appear unstable: Some of the dumbest people in any organisation
work for human relations and have very little knowledge of your job. You
should always have an office at home, both for your job, but also for clients
between jobs. You need a base and an infrastructure, because unrelated
reasons may sometime yank your current position from under you unexpectedly.
Do not expect to collect your things only accompanied by security after you
have been terminated. However, there is a difference between ethically
having information and resources you are entitled to have and pilfering them.
Be careful of the Bonus Ego Trap: you are told your salary is one thing and
your bonus can be as high as something else. You are told that "of course,
you are a top performer and will earn the top bonus" but there are many
factors beyond your control and you should never count your bonus before you
receive it.
Infrastructure is important, and a big reason why people work for
large organisations and why they belong to all sorts of associations:
infrastructure is access to libraries, databases, knowledge of vendors,
experience in doing things. Much experience is only learned by doing because
if you just read about it, you'll inevitably miss some minor point. When you
work for a large organisation, even projects you were not directly involved
in become part of your subconscious knowledge, and you will pick up how
ordinary but necessary details are handled. Now, you can also pick up such
information by overhearing people on a bus, in a corporate garden courtyard,
a business library (like SIBL or NYPL) or a food court. Learn to cultivate
access to infrastructure, but use, don't own. Even if you fail at something,
you learn: Ben Rosen learned more from the failure of Osborne than any thing
else. The late conflict management professor Margaret Chandler (a protoge of
Scy State and Chgo MBA dean George Shulz) told us that to learn to negotiate
to revive the insticts we had as children when we really wanted some toy our
parents would not get us: reawaken the competitive child in you. Besides
just infrastructure, you also learn how to navigate a big firm, for when you
are on the outside, trying to sell them something or trying to get them to do
something. Someone who hasn't seen the procedures and even the stupidities of
a large firm from the inside will never understand them from the
outside. Also many big firms have exceptional training programs: for example,
a large firm will pay you to get your licences, while small firms pay you a
larger commission because part of your commission isn't paying for training
of others.
A lot of professions (medicine, law, banking, comandos) have a
tradition of putting new recuits through many sleepless nights, sometimes
doing totally worthless tasks. Wall Street particulary never does anything
ahead of time and always asks you to "get it done yesterday", while the day
before everyone sat around reading their newspapers. The benefit of this
torture for the new recruit is that skills learned in school become
instinctive and internalised by their subconscious and the new recruit will
then be able to perform perfectly under any circumstances. Given how
prestigious firms chew up and discard most new recruits like this, the
recruits should be careful to resist the temptation to spend their earnings,
but instead should try to accumulate assets. Perhaps they should consider
buying three diversified funds (ETFs are now popular; the mix might be small
cap, hi yield and hi growth) and to invest in the one closest to its low, and
to try to eventually live off a fraction of their dividends while investing
all earnings. If the economy remains deflationary due to boomer retirements
stay away from debt like the plague and paying off debt is the soundest
investment of them all. After the 1993 WTC bombing, I began leaving my Mont
Blanc and Caran d'Ache pens and Crouch & Fitzgerald leather briefcases and
Brooks Brothers suits at home and I found out the worthless people who wasted
my time before left me alone, but the people who genuinely understood their
work didn't even notice the difference in my attire. Wasting your money on
expensive exhibits will in the long run also prove valueless because spoiled
rich kids are the shallowest and most selfish of friends (they will throw you
away just as easily as they throw away their family money), and in the long
run don't last in an organisation undergoing rapid change and pressure. Go
shop at liquidators or discount stores in poor neighborhoods (eg, Hindi
stores in Black neighborhoods) and work on accumulating assets instead. And
don't get caught up in the computer upgrade treadmill: a new computer every
seven years with some new hardware every year should do. Many, chewed up and
discarded after ten years without making partner or officer, had wisely
accumulated and compounded their assets and they lived comfortably thereafter
regardless of their subsequent careers; sometimes they appear self-employed
or hold commission-based jobs when in fact they really have no job. In the
meanwhile, your TRUE friends, who you accumulate in work and school, are the
most valuable asset; But you must know their souls deeply, not just have sat
across them in class. This is why ultimately, the people skills you learned
at home before any schooling are more important than any education.
Top Lessons of an MBA
Vasos Panagiotopoulos
1. No one (especially, you) will ever do it exactly as you want. [a]
2. Treat one staffer too leniently or unfairly and you lose them all. [a]
3. The best deal you will ever negotiate was as a toddler demanding a toy. [a]
4. Set moderately challenging goals. [a]
5. Your worst first guess is always better than no number at all. [b]
6. Improve everything! [a]
7. No one will ever admit being wrong: it is no use trying to convince them
otherwise; unless you lead them with questions instead of affirmations. [a]
8. Suspicion and trust are usually self-fulfilling prophecies. [a]
9. Asking the right questions is always half the job. [a]
10. If you are nice most of the time, you can get away with being really
nasty once in a while (hopefully only when you really need to). [c]
[a] Prof Margaret K Chandler
[b] Prof Donald Rudyard Lehmann
[c] Niccholo Macchiavelli