A few days ago CB insights shared a link to their collection of quotes about disruption from big name corporate leaders; they called it Foot In Mouth.
I sent it to my “list” with the following comment.
Ignorance? Idiocy? Arrogance?
All of the above?
The replies I received, one from my sister, a retired IT head, and the other from KG, were far more insightful than the queries I sent.
I thought both were worth sharing, so here they are.
From my sister.
Do you know of Joel Barker, the futurist? He’s been around since the mid-70s. I saw a video of his at a conference once, where he talked about paradigm shifts. His example then was Swiss watch makers. When two young kids brought the quartz watch to the Swiss watchmaking community for funding, the Swiss said, “No one will ever want a watch that doesn’t wind.” The kids went to the Japanese and the rest was history. Barker says that when humans have a paradigm, they automatically filter OUT anything that doesn’t support their paradigm. The Japanese had no watch paradigm and so could see the potential. I think those examples from CB are as much paradigm lock-in as stupidity. Or put another way, paradigms lead us to make dumb choices sometimes.
From KG
Upton Sinclair famously stated, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” We may call it stupidity, but it really is vested interests. That’s why innovation comes from those who have little to lose or have no other alternative. No one thinks of vested interests when they work in our favor, only when (usually in hindsight) they are show to have caused loss are they called stupid.
In a time of proven global warming, the US has chosen, as the only nation in the world, to reject the potentially cataclysmic consequences of a warmer globe and have invested $4 trillion to develop the domestic oil & gas industry rather than investing these monies in future technologies that can save the planet. These vested interests are causing an existential crisis, and all the systems we’ve built.
There are so many areas that we are struggling with as a species due to vested interests — things that threaten our survival. These range from the ones that are commonly spoken about, like global warming and environmental destruction. They also include synthetic chemicals and nano materials that are giving us cancer and making us sterile, an economic system that ignores externalities and the tragedy of the commons, and our challenges with making sustainable decisions in an increasingly complex World.
A question was posted on Quora after the last election explaining that the poster had voted for Trump as a joke, was horrified that he’d won and asked how he could change his vote.
That level of ignorance seems well beyond what Socrates had in mind in his comments on voters.
And the image below is meant as a graphic argument against the belief some people have that their single vote doesn’t count for much.
I’ve watched it morph many times over the last 30 years, but what I find different this time is what I can only call entrepreneurial stupidity—a combination of arrogance, myopia and ignorance.
I don’t think it’s too widespread, but when you come head-to-head with it it tends to bring you up short.
“Jaime,” an entrepreneur with whom I, who has a B2B subscription startup, attended an event that had entrepreneurs presenting to investors.
He was highly offended because one of the presenters was looking for investment to start a winery.
Jaime said that a winery was a business, not a startup, nor was it scalable; when I disagreed he quoted Steve Blank to me, “a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”
First of all, in the post, Steve says, this is “a new definition of why startups exist” and as to the scalable part, someone had better tell Naked Wines and its portfolio of startup wineries that they aren’t scalable.
It reminded me of a young woman I spoke with in 2000 when I was still a headhunter.
We were talking about startups and I said something to the effect that I’d been working with startups since the Seventies; she disgustedly informed me that startups were a function of the Internet.
I guess someone forgot to tell Hewlett and Packard, Steve Jobs and dozens of others, and, more recently, Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, the two guys who started $100 million, 100 employee Method cleaning products, that their companies weren’t startups.
The lesson here is that while some startups may go where no person has gone before, most will leverage the existing adding tweaks and new twists to add value.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
“The startups that really get hosed are going to be the ones that have easy money built into the structure of their company: the ones that raise a lot on easy terms, and are then led thereby to spend a lot, and to pay little attention to profitability. That kind of startup gets destroyed when markets tighten up. So don’t be that startup. If you’ve raised a lot, don’t spend it; not merely for the obvious reason that you’ll run out faster, but because it will turn you into the wrong sort of company to thrive in bad times.” — Paul Graham, co-founder, Y Combinator
Graham’s comment is from an email he sent to his portfolio companies in response to the Facebook IPO fiasco.
While everything he says is true, the spending standards he recommends were just as important before Facebook’s IPO as they are now.
One of the great attractions of startups has always been the lack of bureaucracy.
However, when founders jettison financial controls in the name of eliminating bureaucracy the only thing they accomplish is to show off their own ignorance.
Would you even consider designing a product from start to finish without detailed specification? Or design reviews? Or market feedback? Or testing?
No?
Then why would you consider running your company without viable fiscal controls?
Have you been following the News Corp phone hacking scandal?
Obviously, as a corporate culture maven I find New Corp’s endemic culture fascinating—in much the same way that a snake fascinates a bird.
The phone and email hacking, dumpster-diving and snooping are disgusting in themselves, but it is Rupert and his son James’ denial of any knowledge despite extraordinary proof and testimony to the contrary that amazes me.
Moreover, I find the idea that ignorance excuses bosses from responsibility for the actions of their organizations to be ludicrous, whether country, conglomerate, company or team.
I felt that way when Nixon denied knowing about Watergate; when Reagan denied knowing about Iran-Contra; and when Beech-Nut President Niels L. Hoyvald denied knowing about the fake apple juice; the list goes on and on.
In my mind it doesn’t matter if the top person knew or not, because as top person he (a pronoun of convenience) should have known.
Last week when I was looking for Ted Kennedy quotes I ran across this one from Frank Dane, “Life is strange. Every so often a good man wins.”
I liked it so much that this week I went looking to see what else Dane said; I found other insightful comments, so tried to track down a bio on Dane—no luck.
More quotes, but nowhere could I find information on who he is or what he does.
I’m sharing the quotes anyway and if any of you know more about him please share your knowledge in the comments.
Obviously, Dane did not have a great respect for those in politics…
“Never vote for the best candidate, vote for the one who will do the least harm”
“The news of any politician’s death should be listed under ”Public Improvements.””
“Where the criminals cover their crimes by making them legal.” [On Washington D. C.]
However, he did have a wonder grasp on finances and success…
“Remember when $25, 000 was a success? Now it is a garbage collector.”
“A set of rules laid out by professionals to show the way they would like to act if it was profitable.”
“Blessed is he who talks in circles, for he shall become a big wheel.”
My favorite is his comment on us, us in any country, city or any conceivable grouping…
“Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today and it will set the pace tomorrow.”
Think of all the times you’ve used it as your argument of choice—or had it used on you.
The problem, Gloria Steinem tells us, is that “Logic is in the eye of the logician.”
That makes logic a moving target and subject to the whims of MAP, which means that “Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence,” according to Joseph Wood Krutch
Ambrose Bierce offers a wonderful definition, “Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”
Boy is that true.
John Locke tells us that “Logic is the anatomy of thought,” while Leonard Nimoy believes that “Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.”
But it was Dale Carnegie hit the nail on the head when he said, “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice, and motivated by pride and vanity.”
And Tryon Edwards warns us that “Prejudices are rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic,” because, as Anon tells us, “The best defense against logic is ignorance.”
Which goes a long way to explaining why no one on Wall Street or the SEC listened to Warren Buffet or Harry Markopolos respectively.
NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof comments that we finally elected an unabashed intellectual to the Presidency (it’s definitely worth reading), but what resonated more with me was the part that ties so closely with that CandidProf has been telling us.
“We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.
Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn’t realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.”
I’ve met people who think that the “Middle East” is a country;
a nurse once explained to me that the war between Serbia and Bosnia wasn’t racial because both sides were Caucasian;
a business type told me that Arkansas and Kansas were next to each other like North and South Dakota;
CandidProf says that his students don’t know that round means spherical, so they think the Earth is a disk;
something like 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate.
I’m actually grateful for Palin’s error because it highlights the level of ignorance that has become acceptable and the condition of education in this country.
I’m not saying that it’s necessarily great in other countries, but I don’t live in them either and they don’t bragg about being the world’s leader.
Perhaps it’s time to turn our focus from being the ‘leader’ in fixing the world’s problems to being the ‘leader’ in fixing our own.
The stupidity exemplified in the No Child Left Behind law that has led to a lowering of already low standards in the name of receiving funding is criminal.
We need educational reform that isn’t test-based, but focuses on real learning including critical thinking and is adequately funded.
Funding that shouldn’t be the problem once we stop spending $70 billion a month on the war—not that I think much of it will go towards education.
The stupidity of parents in brainwashing their kids into believing they are special and entitled to good grades and good jobs merely because they exist is tragic.
This entitlement stupidity is likely to carry on to future generations, unless it gets good and stomped down when it comes in contact with reality.
What ignorance can you add to the list above?
What ideas do you have for combating the problems?
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Yet again, 
Have you been following the News Corp phone hacking scandal?
I liked it so much that this week I went looking to see what else Dane said; I found other insightful comments, so tried to track down a bio on Dane—no luck.
Think of all the times you’ve used it as your argument of choice—or had it used on you.
“We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.
