Scribbles

I feel compelled to share with you the lecture “Solitude and Leadership” by William Deresiewicz. One of my best friends forwarded it to me a few months ago, and I’ve re-read it many times, thinking about its main argument. Some background first. The lecture was given to the plebe class (freshman cadets) at the prestigious United States Army Military Academy at West Point. The lecture itself focuses on the the importance of thinking to push oneself beyond today’s valued characteristics of commonplace and conformity. While Deresiewicz gave the lecture within the context of the real world and the military, most of the lecture and its key point are applicable to all of us who aspire to something more.
 
One of the main points is that our entire system, from education to corporation, has generated an incredible class of high performing conformists. This was a point echoed by Seth Godin in Linchpin, which I reiterated in a separate post about becoming drones. I quote Deresiewcz below as he talks about young people from the perspective of a Yale admissions officer a few years ago. It’s particularly telling because it spares none of the top professions today:

So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.” I had no doubt that they would continue to jump through hoops and ace tests and go on to Harvard Business School, or Michigan Law School, or Johns Hopkins Medical School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey consulting, or whatever. And this approach would indeed take them far in life. They would come back for their 25th reunion as a partner at White & Case, or an attending physician at Mass General, or an assistant secretary in the Department of State.
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As I thought about these things and put all these pieces together—the kind of students I had, the kind of leadership they were being trained for, the kind of leaders I saw in my own institution—I realized that this is a national problem. We have a crisis of leadership in this country, in every institution. Not just in government. Look at what happened to American corporations in recent decades, as all the old dinosaurs like General Motors or TWA or U.S. Steel fell apart. Look at what happened to Wall Street in just the last couple of years.

We live in a system that churns out intelligent drones who create massive societal problems. Instead of generating true value for the world, they’ve destroyed economies in the name of creating shareholder value or personal gain. In essence we’ve trained generations of bright people on how to game the system to maximize their own gain (again, our own fault for elevating wealth as an aspirational value system) at the huge detriment of those who cannot. Yes, the Goldman’s and Carly’s of the world are labeled as leaders in the sense that they are so successful at fleecing their way to unimaginable personal wealth while creating so little, if not outright negative, real world value.
 
Deresiewicz argues that thinking and reflection, what he loosely labels as solitude, as a major way to develop personal leadership. While I explicitly warned against the distractions of thoughtless media in the previous mentioned posting, a year later things have become harder with the explosion of social media. My identity as a technologist, pits using these tools in trying to understand and improve against falling to their addictive cheap calories to the brain. It’s easy to slip between experimentation and mindless consumption. I must keep reminding myself that ideas or thoughts of deep value, require a level of thought and work that cannot be generated quickly.

Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.

I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.

I/we often succumb to mistaking conventional wisdom for original thought. After reading the same convincing argument from multiple sources over a period of time, it’s easy to assimilate it and claim as my own, without performing the sufficient work to challenge that thought, testing it with real research, and deeper thinking. The scariest part of this process is how unconsciously it occurs.
 
Along the same lines, my personal challenge in thinking about technology’s place in the world is rising above all that input and generating original ideas that sprout from the varied connections. As efficiently as I consume ideas from the best (which is absolutely necessary), the hardest step is still that of origination, inception if I may loosely borrow that term.
 
To close, if you’ve missed the essay, I highly recommend spending a chunk of time and reading it in one session. And then practice the introspection it touts. It will help you figure something out, either about the world, or yourself.
 

Thomas Friedman, one of my favorite columnists from the New York Times, argues in his new book, The World is Flat, that we have reached a point where the physical and mental walls that barricaded individuals from participating in a global community and accessing information and knowledge have come tumbling down, resulting in a flat world.  He supports his theory by describing the enabling technologies and the shift in people’s beliefs all around the world that contribute to the massive globalization we are witnessing today.  This is far beyond outsourcing white collared jobs overseas.  This 500 page book articulates how the attitudes and thoughts of people all around the world have changed.  The rest of world is no longer trying to play catch up to the US; they are trying to get ahead of the US.  Globalization 3.0, he claims, is when everyone right down to the individual level, everywhere, can compete on a level playing field.

Before reading this, I had several threads of thought that closely mirror those presented.  But they were loose and unorganized.  And even though, through my own background, I am already familiar with most of the “ten flatteners” Friedman describes, I appreciate his taking out the time to organize and present these current events in such an informative and enjoyable read.  He summarizes those loose thoughts of mine nicely into a congruent theory, replete with anecdotes, statistics, and insight.

One of the author’s perspectives that resonated was on what the US should do in education and attitude towards the surrounding competition.  He conveys the point of how fewer students today find science and engineering an attractive field of study compared to just a few decades ago.  Not only that, but our government has done little to attract both homegrown and foreign talent to research and development in those fields.  Back in first grade when I declared my intent to become a scientist, it was met with sound approval and encouragement all around.  But nowadays, it’s treated as nerdy and uncool, thanks to a sense of complacency and misportrayal by the entertainment industry.  I wonder at what point in our society did being “cool” and having an analytical, quantitative mindset become mutually exclusive.  Regardless, if you haven’t been paying attention, the gap between US and the rest of the world is becoming surprisingly thin.  I couldn’t have found a better analogy to compare this to than the one Friedman conjures – the recent failures of the US basketball team in international competition.

Many critics claim he oversimplifies.  But Friedman does in fact present the many potential obstacles in the world, such as terrorism and political instabilities, that could erect the walls back up again.  He even describes how people with the intent of creating chaos can and will use the very same flatteners to bring those walls back up.  Nonetheless, he shares my view, which is to approach the future with grounded optimism and to spread the ideal of creating something positive for others.

My decision to undertake my studies abroad has been reaffirmed by Friedman’s ideas.  When you read his book, you will understand why I find my upcoming education at INSEAD so exciting and so crucial.

On Wednesday night, my good friend and I had the honor of presenting a BOF session in the Marriott.  Unfortunately, we were scheduled at the last possible timeslot at 10:30pm, which overlapped the after-dark bash from 7-midnight.  Never mind that in a predominantly male techy convention we were going against live female rock bands, booze, food, and games, they even hired Dennis Miller to perform right before us.

Having never seen Dennis Miller live before, I can only judge his performance against others I’ve seen.  He routine entertained, but I still felt like he mailed it in.  The guy was reading off notes and just firing off rants without any clear theme or direction. Of course within each rant, he delivered with his exceptional sarcasm and witty language, but that should be auto-pilot for him.  He sort of closed with his usual political rants about how we should support the President, something I’m not sure resonates with the mostly liberal (and European) crowd.

The good news: most people who cared enough to attend our presentation were the hardcore developers  (a good 30-40 of them) that didn’t even bother with the party.  They were clearly tired, but I think they walked away with some good information.  Our goal was to share some of what we learned in our scalability work so others don’t have to go through the grunt work we already did.  We left with a nice memento: the sign Sun posted out the door that announces the BOF titles and schedules.

Hey, it’s my annual pilgrimage to JavaOne again.  I try to make it to this conference each year, and I think I’ve only missed one in the last few years.  This time, given my situation, I approaching it with a different mentality and physicality.

Java has become a much more mature technology compared to back in the hayday.  This is apparent in the talks and sessions offered.  Other than it being a huge software developer conference (supposedly 15,000 this year) where people get to meet up, talk shop, and party, I wonder how many more years they can sustain it.  This time around, I plan on focusing more on the business aspects of Java related technologies and what intentions Sun has for their crown jewel.

Luckily I convinced my boss to let me book a hotel this time around, since I will be presenting a BOF session with a good friend and colleague.  This saves us the hour long commutes we’ve made in the past years, and allows us to participate in more of the after-hour events.  Last night we had an incredible dinner downstairs of our hotel, the Westin St. Francis.  It was the priciest dinner I’ve ever had, the seven course taster menu at Michael Mina’s with the wine pairings.  The pairings were incredibly well done, given the restaurant’s reputation for their wine cellar. I did find, however, the reds to be less impressive.

I’m excited about this week.  It’ll mark my last attendance at this wonderful conference as a developer.  I’ve made great memories in past events, and I don’t see it being any different this time around.

Yup, you read that right.  It’s that Myron Scholes, the Nobel laureate of Black-Scholes model fame.  Stanford GSB asked the professor to present his thoughts in a talk about Leadership and Trust with the founder of Art of Living Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.  How in the world do these two seemingly unrelated and yet world renown figures get together?

About two years ago, professor Scholes attended one of the courses offered by Art of Living (something I’ve been inexcusably putting off).  Since then, he’s become a firm believer in the benefits of the Sudarshan Kriya, a breathing exercise — dating back countless years from Indian culture and refined by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar — that enables the practitioner to oxygenate the system and relieve stress.  I’ll admit, I was pretty tired during professor Scholes’ presentation and had a difficult time following the connection between Art of Living and the topic of the talk.  Nonetheless, the opportunity to see these two living legends in person was priceless.  For those of you not familiar with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, this man is hugely popular among one of the world’s largest populations, not to mention the whole world.  One student mentioned seeing a surprising number of saris worn on campus today, ostensibly in anticipation of attending this event.

The auditorium was jam packed.  After the talk and a Q&A section, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar led us through a thoroughly relaxing meditation session.  Two thumbs up!  As soon as I finish my moving I’ll be signing up for a local course.