The Big Shift

How the 'Pursuit of Happiness' can save our economy

This piece also appears on Nikhil Goyal's blog in Psychology Today 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”

--The Declaration of Independence

A few months ago, I met a high school senior who had recently been accepted to Princeton. “I really wanted to go to a small liberal arts school where I could focus on creative writing in an intimate environment, but my parents said I should go to the best school that I get into,” she related to me. She went on to say that her parents were also pressuring her to consider a more lucrative profession. What ever happened, I wondered, to the right to pursue happiness?

America’s founders believed that God instilled in every individual a sense of purpose, and it was the right of each person to discover and live out that purpose.  For them, happiness was the deep sense of satisfaction growing out of living a life of passion and meaning. So strongly did they believe this that they enshrined the pursuit of happiness into the American creed, deeming it one of three rights worth mentioning in the Declaration of Independence.

The right to pursue happiness has always been an odd bird, but somehow still central to America’s sense of self. The other two rights cited in the Declaration of Independence—Life and Liberty—establish our freedom from those who would harm us. With these two rights there is a corresponding legal obligation not to interfere with an individual’s freedom. But with the right to pursue happiness, there’s no corresponding legal obligation. No one goes to jail for failing to make another happy. The right does, however, imply a duty to create the conditions that best enable the pursuit of happiness. It’s a demand of our culture not of our legal system.

At the time of the nation’s founding, freshly liberated from British rule, Americans fully embraced the right to pursue happiness. They were fiercely independent of established authority, masters of their own destiny. One-hundred years into the American experiment—with the onset of the industrial era—Americans summarily abandoned the right to pursue happiness in exchange for unparalleled affluence. And another one hundred years later, with the industrial era on life support and a less hierarchical and more dynamic socioeconomic order on the ascendency, we have yet to fully reclaim it.  

As the industrial era set in, assured of unprecedented prosperity, the doyens of industry went to great lengths to snuff out the right to pursue happiness. The education system quickly followed suit. America’s emerging economic model required the creation of a massive and docile workforce engaged in monotonous and menial work. Henry Ford’s assembly-line reduced the once independently-minded American worker into a mere component part of a giant machine.  While at first not every worker acceded to these conditions, eventually, as other industries embraced scientific management practices, workers had little choice but to comply. The new culture of compliance not only affected factory workers but, in due course, shaped the self-image of all but the most entrepreneurially-inclined. It was hard to argue with the results: the standard of living of the average American increased by a factor of fifty in the succeeding decades.

Not long after, compulsory education, designed to move the child of the farmer from the fields to the factory, became the mirror image of the factory, complete with ringing bells and shift changes at regular intervals. The American education system did not enable the pursuit of happiness—far from it —nor did it advance critical thinking or independent thought. Kids were provided the skills, with a special emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic, necessary to be compliant workers in the industrial economy. Despite sweeping economic change in the past three decades, the vast majority of schools still adhere to the factory model.

More than a century after Ford introduced the Model T, the majority of industrial jobs are long gone. Those that remain are vulnerable to more advanced machinery and a growing semi-skilled workforce in Asia. Even many of the information-age jobs are at risk to lower paid tech workers in places like India.

Notwithstanding this big shift, America's core institutions—family, school and work—are stuck in the old industrial mindset, unable to see and adjust to the new economic reality. These institutions are predisposed to moving people along, like a factory conveyor belt, into fulfilling the perceived needs of declining industries. Fearful of change, they conspire to set our sights low. Too many workplaces, counter to their own interests, still place a premium on employing the unimaginative but dependable worker; nearly all schools educate students to be that unimaginative but dependable worker; and most parents dutifully oblige, preparing their children to take their place in this decaying social order. Our core institutions continue to insist that young people trade their potential for happiness for the promise of wealth, status and stability, which, tragically, will make them both less happy and less wealthy.

When Americans finally become unstuck, they will find a whole new universe of opportunity waiting. The very forces that are wiping out the old economy and the old work are giving life to a new economy and new work. The technology that destroyed jobs creates the possibility of mass private enterprise. There’s greater opportunity than ever before in human history to innovate and connect with new markets. In the industrial age, the potential for entrepreneurship was scarce, requiring large amounts of capital or super-human initiative; today it's abundant, requiring nothing more than a laptop, a creative eye and an adventurous spirit.

In this new era, raising and educating our kids to obtain basic skills and follow a once defined path to success went from being a good bet to a bad bet. Raising and educating them to bring out their creativity, chase their dreams, and dare to be different is both less risky and potentially more rewarding. Far from being an obstacle to productivity as it was during the industrial era, the pursuit of happiness is key to thriving in the emerging connection economy. Our economic fortunes will likely grow in direct proportion to the number of people who throw off their industrial-era shackles, figure out what they were meant to do, and bring their talents to the marketplace.

We gave up the right to pursue happiness in the 20th century and desperately need to get it back in the 21st.

Devaluing Individual Differences is the New Bigotry

Jeremy, now 18, has always been a bit different. He was a dyslexic child who didn’t always click with his teachers and classmates. Jeremy was frequently bullied in school. He consumes fantasy literature and movies, and has a flair for creative writing. He’s not very interested in school. A couple of his English teachers have noticed his writing abilities, but still gave him low grades in their classes. Because of his lackluster grades and SAT scores, Jeremy was not accepted into the creative writing programs at his liberal arts colleges of choice, even though the admissions officers were quite impressed with his highly imaginitive writing samples.

We typically think of bigotry as prejudice against a group, such as African Americans, gays, women, or Jews. In each case, the group has experienced a pattern of mistreatment by large segments of society or the government. In labeling this pattern of mistreatment as bigotry, we highlight the need to support and protect the victims and to censure the behavior of the perpetrators.  We include the victim group in our understanding of diversity.

But why do we limit our understanding of bigotry to groups? Aren’t individuals who deviate from the norm, who learn differently, think differently, and act differently, also mistreated by large segments of society? Isn’t mistreating and bullying a "quirky" individual such as Jeremy every bit as insidious as mistreating a member of a group? Doesn’t the victim suffer just as much and need the same level of protection? It’s time that we recognize cruelty against individuals who are different as a form of bigotry. Indeed, with astounding progress in gay rights in the past decade, overcoming bigotry toward individuals may well be the next big social project.

All forms of bigotry are both bad for the victim and bad for society. The victim bears the brunt of the hatred, but the larger society deprives itself of the victim’s full contribution. Slavery in the American South, for example, was first and foremost a crime against the slaves, but it also severely hampered the South’s economy. In providing itself slave labor, the South denied itself consumers with purchasing power. Northern states, by contrast, boasted a more expensive labor force that could afford to purchase goods produced by the burgeoning industrial economy. The North flourished while the South languished. Racism turned out to be an economic as well as a moral scourge.

The same principle applies to gender equality. When Bill Gates spoke at a Saudi university, a Saudi man asked Gates if Saudi Arabia will ever achieve its goal in becoming a world leader in information technology.  Gates responded that “well, if you’re not fully utilizing half of the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the top ten.” Societies and institutions that exhibit gender inequality are poorer and less innovative than those that include women. By the same token, a business dominated by an old boy’s network is handicapped by its failure to use the entirety of its human resources. Women employees are the primary victims, but the company pays a price in profits for its sexism.  

With the onset of the civil rights era and the feminist movement, America began to come to terms with its legacy of racism and sexism. It passed new laws and classified victim groups as protected classes. It was no longer permissible to discriminate against minorities in employment or socially acceptable to hurl racial epithets. Human resources departments began diversifying the workforce, which meant including people of various protected classes. Diversity itself became a value. While America still has a ways to go in overcoming its legacy of racism and sexism, at the very least it has a robust legal and social framework in place enabling progress.

There is no such framework protecting individuals who are different. As with the victims of other forms of bigotry, the Jeremys of the world are the primary victims, but in mistreating them, in underestimating their value, in shutting them out of the discussion, society deprives itself of their talents. We need people who are different, who bring a fresh approach and an alternative point of view. In being different, they think differently, and bring incredible value to our society and economy.

There's an ugly streak in society, however, that wants to purge such diversity from its ranks and wants everyone to be the same. And just as bigotry against groups can be embedded in the fabric of society, so too can bias against individuals with differences. The very structure of formal education, inasmuch as it upholds a single definition of intelligence and talent, devalues their attributes and potential contribution. The talents of those who deviate from the norm are often invisible to those around them.

Cruelty to individuals, like other forms of bigotry, is a cultural pathology that stifles the contributions of its victims, and suppresses human creativity and the growth of knowledge. It hurts not only the victim, but society at large. The purpose of the diversity ideal—the antidote to bigotry—is not just to protect the individual but to advance society. It calls for using everyone's talents. Up until now, we have mostly limited the definition of diversity to including protected groups. Top learning expert Mel Levine notes, however, that “the growth of our society and the progress of the world are dependent on our commitment to fostering in our children, and among ourselves, the coexistence and mutual respect of these many different kinds of minds.”

In making the case that mistreating and denying people who are different is a form of bigotry, and that our concept of diversity should include people with individual differences, I’m not arguing for the creation of a new protected class under the law or a new form of political correctness. I’m simply trying to raise our collective consciousness of kids like Jeremy, who have so much to offer the world but are precluded from fully offering it. They are the victims of systemic discrimination. We all pay the price.

Book recommendation: The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott Page

 

 

Is it ok that your teenager calls you an ass?

A few nights ago, I was sitting around with two other parents of teenagers doing what parents of teenagers do in such situations: talk about our teenagers.

We are all proud of our teens. They are “great kids with great heads on their shoulders.” They know that it's bad to drink and drive, and that nothing good can come out of snorting cocaine or having unprotected sex. They occasionally surprise us with acts of loving kindness. They can be exceedingly mature and generous.

But then one of the parents, a mother of two teens, decided to rain on the party and blurted out: “Jared said to me today ‘you are being an ass.’ I wish that was the worst thing he’s ever said to me but it’s not. It really gets under my skin. I would never in a million years have said that to my father!”

The other parent, a prominent doctor and very involved father, sighed, acknowledging without saying as much that his teen had also called him an ass. “I would never have even thought such a thing about my father, let alone called him it. I just had too much respect for him.”

“Did you have an open relationship with your father in the way that you do with your boys?” I asked.

“No,” he admitted.

Is there a tradeoff between preventing your kid from calling you an ass and having an open and honest relationship with him? And if so, which is better, being called a bad word but open with your teen, or being revered but closed?

One of the worse things that can happen is for your teen to call you an ass in front of your parents or in-laws. That does not go over well. Your parents will lecture you endlessly, as if you were the teenager, about the need to instill respect in your teenager.

Your parents have been off the parenting circuit for a very long time, going on cruises or playing Bridge with their friends in Florida. They are not accustomed to the adversarial behavior of a teenager. Their selective memory romanticizes your teenage days. Never mind that they allowed you to get away with ten times more than their parents allowed them to get away with. They value deference and respect. They don’t realize that the culture of parenting has changed, just as it had changed from the time they were kids to the time they became parents.

Indeed, allowing your teenager to get away with calling you an ass is really a function of larger change in our culture. Our society is much more irreverent to authority today than it was a generation ago. We see such irreverence on TV, film, and the internet. Our kids see it in how other parents and kids interact. We parent within the parameters of larger cultural norms. No parent is an island, notwithstanding the usual parental drivel “I don’t care that Mikey Smith’s mom gave him an iPhone.” Parents care a lot about what other parents do and say, whether we admit it or not.  We have become more tolerant of being called an ass because our friends and neighbors have as well.

Some decry the decline in reverence, but it’s really just a sign that society is beginning to place a higher value on independent thought and creativity than on compliance. Many parents have come to realize, based on their own experiences at work, that being compliant or obedient is not all it’s cracked up to be. It may get you a job but it won’t get you ahead. These parents have ceased instilling blind obedience in their children, but then feel guilty for allowing their kids to speak to them in a way they wouldn’t have spoken to their parents.  

I'm sure there are more than a few parents out there who think I’m out of my mind for countenancing such disrespect because their precious teen would never call them an ass. They credit their skillful parenting for their kid’s upstanding behavior. But those of us mere mortal parents with mere mortal children have a tough choice to make when our teenagers mouth off at us. We can go to war with our teen in the hope that she won’t dare do it again, and risk creating a chill in the relationship and shutting down conversation. Or we can simply and calmly tell her that we don’t appreciate the disrespectful language and move on, and risk producing a kid who…. Ummmm…Will be disrespectful her entire life? Is that really a risk? Seriously?

No, it’s not ok that your teenager calls you an ass. Yes, you can live with it.  

Animation of Common Core Proponent vs. Opponent

This short animated debate (that I put together) is based on an exchange of opinion pieces between Marc Tucker, a prominent proponent of Common Core Standards, and Yong Zhao, a prominent opponent, published in Washington Post's Answer Sheet. You can find the original pieces here, here, and here. 

 

We see here not just a difference in education policy, but a difference of worldviews. Let's take a closer look:

Common Core Worldview	Progressive Education Worldview
Nationalized, highly structured, hierarchical systems are more effective	Localized, more flexible, flatter systems are more innovative
Creativity requires a breadth of knowledge	Creativity requires the cultivation of passion (for more, see Ken Robinson article)
Knowledge can be easily assessed	Deep knowledge cannot be easily tested and compared
All students must know the same things and possess the same basic skills	Every student is different and must be able to specialize, and learn in their own way and pace

The Big Shift sides, of course, with the progressive education camp and opposes Common Core standards. However, before we can win the education policy debate and take down Common Core, we must first win the battle over the underlying worldview. People must understand what we are for, not just what we are against. It's time that those who oppose Common Core and high stakes testing offer a coherent alternative and not just a scathing critique.

Book recommendation: World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students, Yong Zhao

 

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Four changes we must all make to thrive in the 21st Century

The chart below lays out four big shifts we must make in order to become more innovative and thrive in the future:

 

Old Order	New Order (Shift)	Rationale
Compliance: Exhort our children to learn the material and comply with authority	Creativity: Cultivate in our children risk-taking, critical thinking, and creativity	We need to produce a generation of innovators who can think for themselves
Competence: Train people to be adequate at a defined set of professions, based on stability, local economic conditions, or financial rewards	Passion: Bring out the sense of purpose and passion of every individual, encouraging that person to do what he or she loves and is best at	Purpose-driven people are more innovative, effective and happy
Uniformity: Uphold a single standard of intelligence, learning and professionalism	Diversity: Embrace a diversity of attributes/strengths as indispensable assets in today’s economy	A thriving society and economy requires a wide variety of people, including those with unconventional strengths and weaknesses
Hierarchy: Impose hierarchical management structures and teaching to maximize efficiencies	Self-organization: Create flatter, self-organizing structures in school and the workplace to maximize innovation	Self-organized teams and learning units are more nimble, and better able to learn and innovate

 Book Recommendation: Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner

How schools create bullying

Andrew is a 14 year old ninth grader who taught himself how to program in Visual Basic so that he can produce his own novice video games. He plans on designing video games when he grows up. Andrew has trouble paying attention in class. While he can tune in to some teachers some of the time, more often than not he simply checks out.

“Andrew!” his biology teacher, Mr. James, bellows. “What are you doing?” Andrew turned red, as his classmates snickered. “You’re not even looking at the right book!”

Being publicly humiliated in class is a way of life for kids like Andrew with alternative learning profiles and for those who otherwise deviate from the norm. Mr. James has little regard for Andrew’s learning differences or feelings. Several of Andrew’s classmates, imitating the teacher, tease him after class. He’s been severely bullied on numerous occasions. When Andrew's parents mentioned to school officials that Andrew complained about being mistreated by Mr. James, they defended the teacher, who is popular among most kids. Given the values and, indeed, the very structure of school, it’s no wonder that bullying is so pervasive.

We speak of bullying as if it’s some irksome alien force, independent of the social structure of school when, in fact, it’s deeply ingrained in the very fabric of school life. The main problem isn’t that certain kids are mean, though that’s definitely the case, it’s that school values some kids and devalues others. Anti-bullying programs focus on teaching kids to be kind, which, of course, is a good thing to do. But telling kids that they should be nice and accepting of others when the school celebrates one type of student to the exclusion of others, is ultimately going to fall on deaf ears. In upholding a single standard of performance--only one definition of intelligence, one method of learning, one way of acting--the school, itself, is not being nice to kids who don’t fit the mold. We should not expect students to be any more respectful of diversity and any nicer to people who deviate from the norm than is the school they attend for seven hours a day.

In all likelihood, Mr. James cannot fathom that Andrew is actually quite talented. The teacher's impatience with Andrew reflects the school's limited model of the mind, which sets up kids like Andrew, whose mind works differently, to be ostracized. While I put some of the blame on Mr. James for lacking insight and compassion, I place most of it squarely on the education system and its relentless drive for homogeneity. Even if boorish teachers like Mr. James were out of the picture, we'd still have a gentler version of the same system, favoring one kind of kid and demeaning another. 

While learning outliers are frequently victims of bullying, they can be bullies too. In such a scenario, the outlier bullies a physically weaker “good student.” The outlier is angry at the way he has been treated by the system, and takes it out on the other student. Both types of the bullying are predictable outcomes of the classroom monoculture.

Some argue that combatting bullying requires cultural change in schools. Bullying, however, is first and formost a structural problem. Unless the structure of school changes, the culture will continue to support bullying. The only way we’ll ever see more compassion and less bullying is to restructure school, allowing for and even encouraging varied kinds of learning, interests and passions.

Such an environment would reduce if not eliminate bullying because it would acculturate kids to a diverse array of learning styles, behaviors and interests. Of course, this new structure cannot eliminate bullying altogether and perfect the human condition--none can--but it can create new norms and vastly improve upon it. Because the school itself would exemplify these values, it would be in a much better position to teach kindness, respect for diversity and opposition to bullying. It would also be a far superior learning environment, empowering kids to pursue their passions and preparing them to flourish later in life.

Until we transform the current cookie cutter education system, anti-bullying measures will be nothing more than a band-aid approach to a systemic problem. 

“Lean out” parenting (Yes, you should be your child’s friend)

I’m for “lean out” parenting (I’m also for lean out schooling and management, but that’s for another time). Lean out is a twist on Facebook COO Sheryl Sandburg’s book title and burgeoning social movement “Lean in,” calling on women to ratchet up their professional aspirations and engagement.

When I say parents should “lean out,” I mean that we should do less punishing, less rewarding, less scolding, less praising, less hovering, less preaching, less controlling, less (over) protecting. Less is more. Of course this is a general philosophy and not an Individual Parenting Plan (IPP). There are 1001 legitimate exceptions, I have no doubt.

Some will view lean out parenting as a call for disengagement and chaos. Lean out does not mean bow out. And, of course, it does not mean that we should relinquish all control. We do have to get our kids to the bus stop in the morning. Rather, lean out means staying clear of what we can’t or shouldn’t control and doing more of what we can and should.

Most parents think they have a major say in their kids’ long-term behavior. This is a monumental illusion. The discipline we mete out has very little if any lasting impact on their behavior. Studies show that punishment works only in temporarily exerting control over a child and has no lasting effect. In one study, eighty percent of children repeated the behavior they were disciplined for that very same day.

Judith Harris first pointed out the futility of disciplining children in her seminal book “The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do,” citing extensive research from studies of twins separated at birth. Researchers believe that roughly fifty percent of a child's personality profile—traits such as friendliness, openness, introversion, nervousness, etc.—are attributable to genes, which means that the other half is attributable to the environment. Studies show that peers and siblings have a much bigger influence than parents on a child’s behavior. Indeed, one of the most important decisions parents make is choosing a neighborhood or a school.

Anyone who doubts this more limited view of parental impact should speak to parents with both biological and adopted children. Almost invariably they will tell you how drastically different their adopted children are from their biological kids.

Notwithstanding the evidence, some parents, typically those with well-behaved children, credit themselves for their kids' stellar conduct. It’s a classic case of “confirmation bias"--we favor information that confirms our beliefs. Mercifully, some of these parents eventually beget a less compliant child, and wonder why all that skillful parenting no longer seems to work.  Given what we’ve learned about the power of genetics, it should surprise no one that well-behaved parents tend to produce well-behaved offspring.

Not only does standard-fare discipline not work, it can make things worse:

• We unnecessarily inflame our family life by constantly battling with less compliant children.

• We hold back our children from learning from the real world by imposing unnecessary restrictions. 

• We impede the development of an internal moral compass by fostering reliance on extrinsic controls.

• We make it more difficult to maintain an open and honest relationship by generating more resentment than necessary.

Parents can likely play a greater role in shaping the values and identities of our children than we can in conditioning their behavior. That probably has more to do with how we model own own values than with any long-winded speech we give or time-out we dish out. Even then, those values must ultimately be reinforced by the larger society if they are to have any staying power. None of us parents in a vacuum.

In short, by being disciplinarians, we trade some of our potential long-term influence on values for short-term control over behavior.

Dropping the pretense of punishment and rewards does not put us parents out of business. It creates the space for meaningful engagement with our children. It keeps the lines of communication open as they grow and makes it more likely that they will consult with us on challenges they face during their critical teenage years. It allows us to be their mentors and, yes, their friends, not in the same way we are with our adult friends, but friends nonetheless. And, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there’s nothing wrong with that. 

By leaning out, we can lean in in ways our children need most.

HBO series Girls on why having your sh*t together is no longer enough

Ok, I'll come clean, I’ve recently started watching the HBO series Girls, the popular comedy/drama about a group of twenty-somethings struggling with life in the Big Apple. Several twenty-somethings in my office have been chatting animatedly about the show at the water cooler, and…Why shouldn’t I watch it?  I mean, it’s important to understand how the millennial generation thinks, right?

The show is, admittedly, highly entertaining, but I digress. The Big Shift is always on the lookout for big shift thinking in pop culture, evidence that the people in Hollywood who wield such staggering influence on our cultural sensibilities recognize how and why the world is changing. If Hollywood gets it, eventually the broader society will too. The writers of Girls get it.

In one of my favorite scenes, Marnie, an art gallery assistant who recently lost her job, finds out that her ex-boyfriend, Charlie, developed and sold an app for lots of money. Marnie is dumb-founded and jealous of Charlie's instantaneous success, and launches into a rant: 

Charlie is living the dream….I thought he was going to be broken for like at least six years…I like mentally budgeted like six years of brokenness…he’s not broken at all…and it just proves to me, like, it doesn’t matter how right you do things…because you know who ends up living their dreams are like sad messes like Charlie, and the people who end up like flailing behind are people like me....who have their shit together.

 

The scene gives voice to a generation’s rude awakening: That you can do everything that your parents told you would get you ahead—study, get good grades, look for a job after you graduate—and end up floundering, while the aimless boob who had heretofore muddled through life makes it big.

The writers of Girls understand that today’s marketplace values less and less people who merely have their shit together, and more and more sad messes who are willing and able to proffer an original thought or do something bold.   

 

Thank you Mike Jeffries, CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Mike Jeffries, the humiliated chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch. He has made a significant albeit unintentional contribution to the positive evolution of our society.

Here's what he said:

"In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids...candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong, and they can't belong."

In a single interview, Jeffries laid bare and likely sullied the pristine brand he worked so hard to build and protect. But he has also damaged the brand of the socially-superior, conformist popular kid, a repugnant cultural archetype that stifles individuality and perpetuates a rigid and often mean-spirited social hierarchy, first in school and later in adult life. In so doing, Jeffries has handed us an occasion to celebrate the kid who doesn’t seek to fit in, the weird, the outlier, the geek, the original.

Thank you, Mike Jeffries, for being a useful idiot.

"Pity the cute kid who gets anointed as the popular one or the class clown who discovers that a rude joke works or the facile actor who succeeds early and often in school plays. The feedback that comes from popularity in a popularity-obsessed system becomes an addiction. Soon the cuteness fades or the jokes get old or other, harder-working actors and musicians take the stage. Now what? How does the popular one stay popular?"

--Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception

 

Do you give exceptional advice?

We have a new intern in my office, a senior in high school who was recently admitted into college. He’s a sharp guy with a lot going on upstairs. He came to my office, and we talked about his future.

Me: What are you thinking of majoring in?

Intern: Political science. I'd like to do advocacy or maybe foreign policy for a government agency.

Me: That’s great. Think of things that will make you stand out. Many people get good grades and do cool internships. If you want to set yourself apart, write opinion pieces for a newspaper, conduct a social media campaign, start a new campus group. Come up with something entirely new. These types of activities will get everyone’s attention and give you the experience and skill you really need to excel.

Intern: Nobody has ever said that to me before.

Me reflecting: Yikes. And I thought I was giving him run-of-the-mill advice. Here’s a young man who has every opportunity in the world in front of him—he's educated, smart, well-spoken, even potentially passionate—but the only advice anyone has given him is to get good grades, go to a good college, get a good job. Follow the protocol and you will be selected. Nobody ever told him he could be exceptional by doing something exceptional.

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman elegantly describes the new economic path we have embarked upon and what it will take to adapt our society. "Parenting, teaching or leadership that “inspires” individuals to act on their own will be the most valued of all," he asserts. 

I wonder if some adults fear that inspiring a young person to attempt something exceptional might cause him or her to veer off the beaten path. If so, they are doing more harm than good. The beaten path is really, well, beaten.