Committed contrarians would do better to play by the rules
In my first year as an undergraduate I was invited to dinner by a brilliant and beautiful man, androgynous in appearance and with a voice that was a lisping drawl. The other guests were beautiful too, as well as clever, rich and shockingly thin.
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The dinner did not begin until 11pm because the most gorgeous of the women was flying in from Paris. As far as I can remember, the conversation centred on the work of Ronald Firbank, a novelist I had not read.
I did not belong to this über-cool group, but had been invited along for comic relief. What was so funny about me was not my wit; it was my normality. They asked me about my working day (9 to 5 in the library and bed before midnight) and then screamed with laughter. In their world of studied extravagance and eccentricity, no one ever, ever did what was expected of them.
Last week I felt my normality hanging heavily on me again, as a result of reading two of the season's hottest new management books. Both are success manuals for the modern world, and both disparage hard work and early nights: they recommend breaking all rules and living a life of risk instead.
The first book is Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite, by Paul Arden, "author of the world's bestselling book" - or so it claims on the cover. (Which is taking a risk with the Trades Description Act, as the number one slot is surely a toss-up between the Bible and Harry Potter.)
Dispensing with argument, Mr Arden makes his point through arty black-and-white photos and aphorism. "Start taking bad decisions and it will take you to a place where others only dream of being," he urges. Which is shockingly bad advice and false anyway - as most of us take plenty of bad decisions, we know only too well the place that such decisions take us. He then argues that age and experience make us too cautious: "When we are young we jump into the pool whether we can swim or not. We have no fear."
Evidently he never met any of my children. Each was born with a colossal sense of fear that meant getting them anywhere near the pool (let alone down a slide or up a tree) involved hours of coaxing, bribing and threatening, and still ended in failure.
The second book is Small is the New Big by marketing guru and blogger Seth Godin. Described on the back as "a huge bowl of inspiration" - this is a collection of "riffs" taken from his blog - and also alleged to be one of the most popular in the world. On risk, this is what Mr Godin recommends: "Cut class. Take a class in French Literature. Interview off campus. Safe is risky."
These are four incredibly stupid sentences, but the last is breathtakingly so. Safe, I can safely say, is safe.
I am prepared to concede two points. First, all of us need occasionally to take risks. Risk is part of life and part of business - especially if you are an entrepreneur. Second, even for the wage slave, risk may be marginally more important than it used to be because careers are no longer a steady progression up one ladder based on seniority, the old-boy network, talent and backstabbing. Yet that does not mean we should start breaking all the rules as if we were a bunch of rebellious students.
The point about risk is that it is risky. Neither author mentions that. To take risks and succeed you need three things. You need luck, you need the right personality and - most importantly - you need to know which risks to take.
Both books contain examples of people (Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren, Sir Richard Branson and so on) who have done things that seemed silly to others at the time and yet they succeeded. What the books do not mention is the millions of other people who did things that seemed silly at the time - and that turned out to be silly too.
If I think of all the really successful people I know, they are not all big risk-takers. Most are good at what they do and are variously ambitious, determined, ruthless and lucky.
The world of business may have changed, but most of the important things that used to apply still do. Small is not the new big. Small is small and big is big. To think something and then think the opposite is even sillier than staying up all night for the sake of it. (In fact, my student friends stayed up to take a lot of recreational drugs, which was at least fun at the time.)
It is still sensible to be sensible. It was sensible for me as a student to work hard and go to bed early, and I still find that this formula works well for me in the cool, flexible job market of the 21st century.
It may be possible to be too sensible, but if that is your problem, I do not advise you to read either of these books. If you try to be different but you are actually a regular kind of person, you will end up being different in the same way as everyone else - that is to say, not different at all.
In case anyone is curious, I am going to end by revealing what the beautiful, live-dangerously students are doing now, as far as I know. One has made a couple of experimental movies and lost a lot of money. One has spent years on and off in drug rehabilitation, and is lucky to be alive. One wrote a "promising" novel in her 20s and has not been heard of since. One has become a famous writer.
These guys never took the safe option. They cut class and may even have taken a course in French literature (though I doubt it). For a few it worked out, and for most it did not. That is risk for you.
与众不同真的很“酷”吗
在
我读大一的时候，曾有一位才华出众的漂亮男人邀我赴宴。他的外表男女难辨，声音慵懒、含混不清。其他的来宾也都长得很漂亮，既聪明又富有，并且全都瘦得吓人。
宴会直到晚上11点才开始，因为最漂亮的女宾是从巴黎飞过来的。我能够忆起的是，谈话是围绕着罗纳德?弗班克(Ronald Firbank)的作品进行的。这位小说家的作品我从未读过。
我并不属于这种“超酷”的圈子，他们邀请我只是为了营造某种滑稽的效果。我的滑稽之处并不在于我的智慧，而是因为我是个正常人。他们询问我的工作日是怎样安排的(朝九晚五泡在图书馆，午夜之前上床睡觉)，然后大笑着发出尖叫。在他们刻意放纵和反常的世界里，所有人做的事情都出乎他人的意料之外。
上周，在拜读了本季度最热门的两本管理学新书之后，我再次感觉到自己还是那样的正常。这两本书都是现代社会的成功指南，并且都对于辛勤工作和按时就寝（早睡早起）不屑一顾：它们建议打破所有的常规，过一种冒险的生活。
第一本书是《不论你想什么，都反过来想想》(Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite)，作者是保罗?阿登(Paul Arden)。“全球最畅销书的作者”――反正封面上是这么声称的。[这种说法有违反《商品说明法》(Trades Description Act)之虞，因为这第一名的位置，显然应该在《圣经》(Bible)和《哈里波特》(Harry Potter)两者之中。]
阿登没有进行论证，而是通过黑白照片和格言警句来表明自己的观点。他极力主张：“开始做一些糟糕的决定吧，那将引领你到达一个他人只能在梦中到达的地方。”这可真是个糟糕透顶的建议，怎么讲都是错的――因为我们多数人都做出过很多糟糕的决定，对于这些决定将把我们带到什么地方，我们可是再清楚不过了。接着，他还辩称，年龄和经历使得我们过于谨慎：“我们小的时候，不管会不会游泳都敢跳进泳池。我们什么都不怕。”
显然，他从未见到过我的孩子们。这些孩子天生都有着明显的恐惧感，这意味着：要想把他们带到任何靠近池塘的地方（更别说让他们滑滑梯或是上树了），需要花上几个小时连哄带骗、威逼利诱，而且即使这样，最后也未能得手。
第二本书是《“小”即新“大”》(Small is the New Big)，作者是营销大师兼博客(blogger)作者塞思?戈丁(Seth Godin)。这本书的封底印着这样的介绍――“一大碗灵感”（这句话摘自他博客上的即兴言论），同时也号称是全球最畅销的作品之一。贴近风险，这就是戈丁的建议：“逃课。听一堂法国文学课程。去校园外接受面试。安全是危险的。”
这是四句愚蠢得让人难以置信的话，但最后一句简直愚蠢到了令人触目惊心的地步。安全――我可以安全地说――就是安全的。
我准备承认以下两点：首先，我们所有人都需要偶尔冒冒险。风险是人生和事业的一个组成部分――特别当你是个企业家的时候；其次， 即使对于“打工奴隶”而言，冒险可能都要比以往更重要一点，因为职业生涯不再是建立在资历、关系网、天份和手腕儿等基础上的阶梯式过程。不过，这并不是说，我们就该像一群有着叛逆精神的学生一样，打破所有常规。
冒险的特点在于：它是危险的。上述两位作家都没有提到这一点。要想冒险并获得成功，你需要三件东西：运气、适合的性格――以及最重要的一点――你需要知道去冒什么样的风险。
两本书包含了成功人士的例子 [维维恩?韦斯特伍德(Vivienne Westwood)，马尔科姆?麦克拉伦( Malcolm McLaren)和理查德?布兰森爵士(Sir Richard Branson)等等），这些人所做的事情，当时在别人看来都是愚蠢的，但最终却获得了成功。而这两本书没有提到的是：数以百万计的其他人，也做了当时在别人看来是愚蠢的事情――而最终被证明的确是愚蠢的。
如果想想所有我熟悉的那些真正成功的人士，他们并不都是大冒险家。其中多数人在他们所处的职业领域成就斐然，并且尽管有着不同的表现形式，他们都雄心勃勃、坚定不移、不留情面、而且幸运。
商界或许已经发生了改变，但多数过去适用的重要法则如今依然有效。“小”并不是新“大”。小就是小，大就是大。想到什么事，然后就反过来想想，这甚至比整个晚上为了熬夜而熬夜还傻。(事实上，我的同窗朋友们会熬夜服用很多“消遣药物”，至少当时觉得很开心。)
保持明智仍然是明智的。对我而言，当学生时努力学习、早早上床是一种明智行为，我还发现，在21世纪冷漠而变化多端的职场上，这套办法对我同样奏效。
人是有可能“过于”明智的，但如果你有这种问题，我建议你别去读这两本书中的任何一本。如果你试图与众不同，而实际上你却是那种普普通通的人，那么，最终你与众不同的方式也会与其他人一样――也就是说，根本没什么与众不同之处。
为了满足人们的好奇心，最后我将透露自己所知道的那些漂亮、以冒险方式生活的学生现在在做些什么。一位拍了几部实验电影，亏了不少钱。一位花了很多年时间反复戒毒，并幸运地活了下来。另一位在她20多岁时写出了一部“前景看好”的小说，此后一直销声匿迹。还有一位成了著名作家。
这些家伙从不做出“安全的”选择。他们逃课，或许甚至真的去读了法国文学课程(尽管我对此怀疑)。这对于少数人来说确实奏效，但对大多数人却并不管用。这就是风险。
