WSJ: Advice to New Grads: Scale or Bail

As I make final preparations for my YCISL workshop this weekend with undergraduate students from the City University of Hong Kong, I read “Advice to New Grads: Scale or Bail” by Andy Kessler in today’s WSJ (Opinion Section in Monday May 21 21, 2018 issue; Inside View column) looking for spreadable wisdom from the author’s perspective.

I thought it started off well, pulling in the advice that commencement speakers are giving at this year’s college graduations. Kessler’s main idea appears to be one of “scale” where the number of users are in the “thousands, or millions, or even billions.” His point about “Scale is about doing more with less” is quite inspiring – although I feel he needed the word “proportionally” in there.

To me, this resonates with Rory Sutherland’s point about “Stuff that has a big effect” and “Stuff that costs a lot of money” where there is opportunity to do “stuff” with big effect but costs little or no money. I think the key word here though is “opportunity” and it seems Kessler discounts opportunities and pathways (eg, “Stop doing one-off volunteering” and use of the word “Bail” in the title). It’s not that his advice is incorrect; it’s just that this advice itself doesn’t scale. It’s binary and not integrative. Innovation is about taking on uncertainty and risk. There is no guarantee.

Bottom line is that problems are everywhere and occurring all the time. Problem-solving – with huge (emotional) impact and rewards – spans all scales and requires action-takers willing to accept the possible outcomes. I think this article needs some framing correction for the social awareness component of EQ so that today’s graduates would be more willing to challenge their abilities and dynamically work with expectations on all scales.