My Challenge to the Class of 2017: Think Beyond the Tweetstorm

In a previous LinkedIn post, I wrote about advice I’d give to my 18-year-old self. This time, I’m thinking about the advice I gave when I was 18 years old myself in a commencement address to my high school graduating class. 

I unearthed the speech when I was moving a few years ago. I had chosen the topic “self-reliance,” for reasons I’ve long forgotten. As you’d expect, the prose is unremarkable, but one line stuck out to me: “I know which way the wind is blowing,” I told my fellow graduates, “but I still have to follow my own course.” 

Nothing like the over-confidence of a high school senior. But the fact is, I would give the same advice today. Somehow I knew even at that young age that thinking and acting for myself would be key to accomplishing anything worth doing in my life, and I’ve spent my career trying to live by that philosophy. What I didn’t appreciate back then was how hard – but also how rewarding – being your own person would turn out to be.

Anyone we admire in life got there by ignoring the herd. What would our world be like today if Steve Jobs believed, as most people did, that nobody needed the internet on a phone? What if Elon Musk thought cars powered by fossil fuels and internal combustion were good enough? For that matter, where would Verizon be if we’d accepted the conventional wisdom back in the ‘80s that the total market for cell phones would be less than 1 million … in the world?

Problem is, independent thinking is rare, especially in a world of sound bites and tweetstorms. Aided by social media that surround us with voices that echo our own thoughts, we tend to live within walled gardens that block out contrarian ideas or alternative viewpoints. The result is a herd mentality, where truth is determined by who has the most followers rather than by who has the most facts.

But reality can’t be captured in 140 characters, and genuine insights of the kind that change history and make breakthroughs only come from getting out of our comfort zones and echo chambers. That means having people with diverse opinions and life experiences around the table. It means actually talking to people who disagree with us, rather than de-friending them on Facebook. It means being willing to fail and learn from our mistakes. Most of all, it means challenging our own preconceptions and doing the work to dig under surface explanations and easy answers masquerading as analysis.

So to paraphrase my 18-year-old self, don’t take the easy way forward. When someone tells you “that’s the way it’s done” or “everybody knows that …” an alarm should go off in your head telling you that there’s more to the story than meets the eye. You’ll make mistakes by going against the herd, but you’ll also find new paths – winding up where you want to be rather than where someone else thinks you should be.

The journey may be more challenging when you forge your own path but, believe me, the view is so much more satisfying.

More Advice to the Class of 2017:

• John Stratton: Be careful with your shadow
• Craig Silliman: Read the river
• Tami Erwin: Learn from every job you have