What would you tell a class of recent grads? High school or college, it doesn’t matter. What advice? What counsel?
Here at Delaware Business Times, I’ll invite your suggestions, about 600 words, about two pages of copy, single-spaced, flush left, in a regular Word doc format. Send to me at SamWaltz@SamWaltz.com and we’ll print two or three of the more interesting pieces of sage advice and counsel.
Ed Rowse caused me to think about this. Ed retired from the DuPont Co. in 2000, after 36 years in technology and engineering. He’s run his own consultancy in that space since. Ed and I did not know each other at DuPont, but we attend Brandywine Valley Baptist Church in Talleyville together.
He’s just returned from a mission to Vietnam and China. He sent me a copy of his report, but asked for some help in answering questions from a Chinese group, younger people interested in business careers.
I won’t include the questions but simply summarize what I told Ed, which could be a brief valedictory.
First, nothing for a business person should be more important than how you develop yourself as an ethical, honest and trustworthy person, and how you love, nurture and grow your family, and grow with your family. That’s a foundational premise, along with your own commitment to lifelong personal and professional growth.
After that …
Well, preparing to succeed in business means, first, knowing how value is created. That’s just so important today because value-creation is better tracked than ever, and earning compensation for value-creation is the ultimate test. Frankly, value is created only in four ways:
- Selling Your Time, whether at minimum wage, $100/hour as a senior technical person, or $500/hour as a law firm partner
- Selling Results, “eat what you kill,” as a sales person, broker, intermediary, or even at the larger organizational level
- Creating and Selling Intellectual Property (IP), whether via USPTO-type IP or simply proprietary problem-solving ideas translated into a product, service and/or or business
- Risking and Leveraging Capital, conserve and build asset value, as one of our DBT family business finalists did in growing over three-plus decades from an Italian water ice stand to over $500 million in commercial real estate with an LTV (loan to value) of less than 50 percent. (In other words, you don’t have to start with a lot of capital to end with a lot of capital — although of course it’s easier if you do!)
Then, it’s about knowing yourself, what you want, and what will make you happy.
Are you happy selling your time, trading your labor for a check at the end of the month?
Do you have an ambition to build wealth for yourself and your heirs?
Are you challenged to create? To problem-solve?
Such self-knowledge questions are infinite. Answering them well also likely depends significantly in part on how your parents prepared you, and on how you’ve prepared your children.
The Chinese group also wanted to know what skills are valued in the Fortune 500, Ed said. I commented that the Fortune 500 is a declining employer in America, and likely the world, being replaced by smaller, often early-stage employers. So I gave some characteristics that each group would think about in new hires.
Fortune 500 companies would tend to value:
- Technical Skills at the higher levels — engineering, finance, law, etc.
- Reputation of Educational Institution for quality of preparation
- Perceived Potential for “Career Growth,” e.g., “the Management Track”
- Capacity to be a Good Teammate, to work well with others in teams
The smaller, early-stage, perhaps start-up, would tend to value:
- Creative Problem-Solving
- A Generalist as well as a Specialist, a “bigger picture” thinker, a “utility infielder”
- Strong Digital Competency, at a macro level and a micro level
- Relentless Work Habits, ability and capacity for long hours
I addressed a couple of other questions in Ed’s note, then focused on a specific one, “what about time management.”
“Success is not so much about time management today as it is about ‘self-management,’ ” I told Ed. “It’s a ‘know thyself,’ and develop the work habits to build accountability within whatever system exists, and ultimately to oneself.”
The assembly line on which Lucille Ball and Ethel Mertz wrapped chocolates is disappearing. The “span of control” — once a supervisor or manager to just four or five subordinates at places like DuPont — has been eviscerated, perhaps today a manager to 20-25 subordinates, or, in its place, self-managing teams.
Yes, it’s a whole new world. In an interview for a cover story about six months ago, the University of Delaware’s B-School Dean Bruce Weber emphasized to me the erosion of some of the traditional MBA-type management courses in favor of more entrepreneurial preparation.
So, what would you tell the new grads?