Book of the Week: "Mean People Suck" by Michael Brenner

Yes mean people do suck, but there's two ways that work best in dealing with these type of people. First, is don't listen to people and second, have a little bit of empathy. A Simmons volleyball captain put it best last fall on how she handles less than pleasant people, that they aren't necessarily mad at her, but had someone or something upset them prior. 

So the do's and don't's. DON'T listen to people, but DO have empathy. It will go a long way. 

I grew up on the PBS show Ghostwriter. I used to love the show about the group of teen friends in Brooklyn, New York that solved mysteries with the help of their ghost friend who could only communicate through reading and writing. I couldn't wait to get home after school and watch the next 30 minute episode in the series arc. 

Ghostwriter since left the airwaves in the mid 90s, but there are still a few story arcs out there on a wonderful platform called "YouTube." Midway through last week, I re-watched one story arc where one of the team members, Rob, got trapped in an old abandoned subway tunnel with a non-team member friend. While the pair were waiting to be rescued, Rob told a short story he wrote. 

Because the story was about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and is something that parallels to today's world, I jotted it down and posted it on my social media. 

What Rob was doing in the dire situation they faced without saying "everything will be ok." His friend was frantic that those words would not have helped, so he told a story about believing there is a light at the long tunnel's end and they would be ok. That's empathy and putting yourself in the other person's shoes because sometimes you need to hear the blunt truth as opposed to platitudes. 

It makes people feel real and feel as though they are heard. It's why saying "don't listen to people" is more powerful than anything else you could say or do. 

Telling stories is what generates interest and is what keeps people coming back. In the world of college athletics it's not enough to showcase only what your student-athletes are doing on the playing surface, but overall. Being a student-athlete is only a piece of who they are. They have other interests and specialties outside their sport and it's paramount to showcase those. 

Last April, I had the privilege to speak with a Harvard wrestler, who while off the mat was noodle chef at a Japanese restaurant in Cambridge, for the program's feature story. It was truly a great story because it paints a broader picture of this young man as more than an athlete. Of course, the original plans were to film inside the restaurant and get some footage of him actually cooking the noodles, but COVID happened and we had to make do with Zoom. But it still came amazing and after speaking with him you could tell his passion for cooking was equally as great as his love of wrestling and excelling academically. 

Telling stories allows for greater empathy and eventually leads to increased awareness or profits. 

(Post Editor's Note: The book also re-iterates something I've always advocated for and it's the need to ask "why." When employees ask why an idea matters, it helps bosses be better bosses. Bosses have to think through why they are doing what they doing and really analyze the reason. The term "because I said so" doesn't cut it and the worst words in business are "it's always been done this way.") 

Book of the Week: "Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity" by Scott Galloway

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our way of life and how we do things. Since March 2020, the virtual world has been a way of life and one of those things that has been affected is education - both K-12 and higher education. 

In the world of K-12 education, this pandemic has exacerbated the socio-economic differences in the country. The children of well-off, affluent families, who can afford a stable internet connection and a quiet place in their homes to learn, are thriving, while the students who have to share a room with multiple siblings, don't have strong internet (or any at all) are falling behind. 

As we move towards higher education, we continue to see the socio-economic gap widening. First, let's talk about the universities themselves. Way before the pandemic began we were already on the precipice of a crisis in higher education. Small colleges and universities were dissolving at a rate of nearly one school per year since 2016, mostly due to financial trouble; COVID-19 has only sped up the process. 

These smaller institutions pride themselves on a few things: 1. the size and the intimate setting where students feel more than a number; and 2. provide an opportunity of advancement for the lower socio-economic class where the bigger schools are just out of reach. With that being said, these schools rely heavily on the enrollment tuition dollars as well as room and board. 

As more and more institutions went online for the 2020-21 academic year and bringing fewer students back to campus, for de-densification purposes, colleges' financial health began to suffer again. The larger schools can weather the storm and wait it out. They all have large endowments - some the size of small countries' GDPs - to offset much of the burden, but the smaller schools are not as fortunate. 

We saw it earlier in the fall. Small schools were opening up their doors and welcoming back students, while the larger schools were being a bit more conservative and keeping much of their population away. It's hard not see that finances played a large role in whether or not to bring the students back. 

But the finances don't just affect the small schools, they affect all schools - just the smaller ones are the ones that are more negatively affected. What we also saw was many students, because education was going to be online, many students were opting to take gap years, which is something Scott Galloway says we will, and should, see more off. 

There is nothing wrong with taking at gap year. It actually can be beneficial. If you are fortunate enough to take a year off to work, do research, or study, it will only help you down the road. You may even be able to get into that bigger school that rejected you the first time around. (School's like that. They like people with real-world experience.) 

Galloway mentions that this may further widen the gap between the haves and the have nots. On the surface, the ability to take a gap year does benefit the students who have money and the resources. It is why you see more students from the Ivy League institutions taking a break before continuing their education, but I argue that it could benefit everyone. 

Any student from any socio-economic background would benefit, but it all comes down to mindset. With the cost of high education rising, it may be better for students considering college to take a gap year. Work a year at Amazon, or an Amazon-like company, earn an income, put the money away, and then they would have the funds to pay for college. If they had to take out loans, it would be much less than what they would be taking out if they went to college directly out of high school. 

Also an additional benefit to doing this is professors will see an increase in attendance in their classes. Once you work in warehouse like Amazon (or maybe THE Amazon) for a year, you will come to find that going to class is actually not that bad. (Editor's note: I can't claim this last piece as fully my idea, one of my history professors at McDaniel said this and he is correct.) 

However, the one caveat that comes with all this, is the value of education. Many of the lower socio-economic do not value education the same way of their higher socio-economic counterparts. Those who are more wealthy, value education and are true life-long learners, feeding off new information that you don't necessarily see in the lower socio-economic classes. 

How you fix that remains to be the question because I do still, very much, believe education to be the way to upper social mobility and learning to work with people with different opinions other than your own. 

(Post Editor's Note: I did enjoy Scott's mention of Twitter and his opinion of what the company can / should do to grow in the market - which as of right now is climbing. Galloway has been very critical of the company, claiming Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, is a part-time CEO. But you can't take away the fact it had an exceptionally good year in 2020 and continues to do well. It out-performed the market this past week, seeing a 13% increase in its shares.) 

Jack Dorsey is a part-time CEO. 85% of his wealth comes from his afternoon job, Square.

It's difficult to ask people to work evenings & weekends when the CEO works mornings — and then moves to another continent. Jack must be replaced.#saturdaythoughts https://t.co/zrZsrtd923

— Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) December 7, 2019