This is someone you’ll want to hire someday, but I’m changing her name (to “Peg”) so only I’ll know who she really is and when she’s graduating.Peg is 17. She happens to have a beautiful voice and sings with her high school chorus.
Peg went on a day trip this summer with her 17-year-old neighbor and neighbor’s parents, and on the way home “Mom” was asking where Peg wanted to go to college and what she wanted to study. The conversation came around to Peg’s singing.
Peg told Mom that she loved to sing, but didn’t feel passionate about it.
“What makes you feel passionate?” asked Mom.
“Singing for an audience,” answered Peg.
A short time later, Peg and her neighbors had taken a detour and were in the midst of natives and shoppers and diners and tourists at Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston. Peg had a hat on the ground in front of her, and she started to sing.
Not long after that, thanks to Peg’s courage and beautiful voice, the hat was filled with nearly $50 from appreciative listeners, and Peg was driving home with her neighbors, probably wondering what had just happened.
In first year business school, half our semester grade in each subject was based on classroom participation. You could not excel without putting yourself “out there.” And part of that involved taking risk—offering ideas and taking positions, even if you knew they would be challenged and even laughed at. So, you had to spell out your marketing plan with your classmates from Kraft and P&G listening. You had to justify your valuation to classmates who had worked at Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. You had to discuss selling tactics with your classmates from Xerox and IBM. There was no hiding, and no chance that you wouldn’t step on a hand-grenade every so often.
The point was this: Not every idea was great, but you couldn’t get to the great ones unless you were willing to take some risk.
Tom Peters said, “"Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.”
Karl Wallenda (of tightrope fame) said it even better: “Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting."
My business school knew this.
Mom knew this, too.
Now Peg knows this. That’s why you’re going to want to hire her someday.
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