Things that we shall learn at school, not business school

Today I was able to attend an event, organized by Chicago GSB Alumni Club and Ernst&Young. It was a lecture by professor Marvin Zonis. He was supposed to talk about transformation of companies in an uncertain world, and he indeed gave us some interesting statistics, but the main point of his speech, which I took home, was the following one. He was asked what his mission was and he said:
‘While I was at high school, I worked at a clothing factory. The work was so hard that I promised myself I would never work again – and I became an academic… *audience laughs*… Yes, I’m joking. In fact, I’m in education, because education can reduce the level of pain people suffer before they change their behavior. Let me explain what change I mean… No one who has lung cancer smokes. Why did they make themselves suffer so much to stop smoking? Why didn’t they stop while being healthy?’
I come to such events for those little things of wisdom. They are obvious when they are pronounced, but it takes a genius to formulate them on your own. So, education is the tool that people can use to learn from other’s experience and mistakes, but not to suffer themselves. On the other note, I believe, that this is the ultimate answer to the Divine Miss N question: why does Entrepreneurship club brings people who are not MBAs - aren’t MBAs make successful entrepreneurs? First, the club does bring just a very small amount of all entrepreneurs – namely – the successful ones (and how many of ‘not MBAs’ are unsuccessful? A lot more than unsuccessful ‘MBAs’, I think). Second, maybe when you know all the statistics, all the constraints and problems – you’re not that eager to try it yourself?
I wish you didn’t have to pay huge sums of money to learn ‘why you need to learn’. I wish more people would hear about it while at school, not business school.
It’s hard to stop doing what you do, even if you know that it may have bad results. That is why it so hard to change companies, even successful ones (especially successful ones!). That is why from the 500 biggest companies in 1947, only 74 of them remained in 1997. That’s why it took Lou Gerstner to take IBM out of crisis. That’s why Jack Welch travels around the world and reads lots of lectures.

Other interesting facts:
* Largest world consumer of gasoline per person… you’ll never guess… It’s Luxembourg!.. The gas is cheaper there than in Germany and France, so many Germans and French go there, buy gas and drive away. So, in fact, the largest consumer is, of course, USA – the first guess you probably had :)
* We will soon reach an oil peak (optimistic estimates – in year 2025), at which half of the oil in the world would be already produced and consumed. So from that point on the prices will go up and the world supplies will go down. Hmmm, maybe a car is not such a nice purchase after all? (No, that’s not the thing that can make me hesitate if I want to buy a car!)
* Bad fact for Russia: easy money (from oil, of course) haven’t helped any country in the world to build a market economy. Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, u-name-it – didn’t have and don’t have a market economy.