One of the things I hope to do in this blog is to offer up a few of my favorite quotes every week in the form of a brief meditation. Today's will be a bit "meta" since I'll introduce both the content and the format for the first time in the blog.
Quote
For each of the meditations, I'll start by stating the quote and the author. Like this:"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect"
-- Mark Twain, personal notebook (1904)
Context
After the quote I'll have a brief overview of the work or speech or context from which the quote was taken (if applicable). In this case, the quote comes from a writer's notebook and is attributed to be from 1904. These "notebooks" were assembled by editors after Twain's death, and bits of journals, scraps, and essay or story fragments and ideas are all cobbled together. It's not clear if this was some thought that he had jotted down when thinking of an essay, working on a story, or simply reflecting on a humorous thought he wanted to capture.
Biography
After the context, I'll give a brief thumbnail biography of the person to whom the quote is attributed. Mark Twain was one of the most famous American authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He led a long and very colorful life, with careers in journalism, mining, river boats, lecturing, and literary fiction. Twain was born Samuel Langhorn Clemens in 1835 in the town of Florida, Missouri. Twain wrote hundreds of short stories and 28 novels, along with essays, lectures, and other writings. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) are American classics, still read and taught in English and literature classes around the world today. The pen name "Mark Twain" comes from a term used on riverboats to announce a sounding (depth) of two fathoms or twelve feet, which means the water is safe for navigation. You can read more about Mark Twain on his Wikipedia page or hundreds of fan and scholarly sites that are dedicated to him.
Twain's comment is an observation about the dangers of "group think." This can wind up leading to dangerous or negative consequences in all areas of life. In organizations like companies, it leads to restricted and narrow thinking because "we've always done it this way." This can lead to everyone believing there is only one way and one solution and failure to see competitive threats in the marketplace from either new nimble start-ups or established companies entering new markets. One of the most famous examples of this in the last decade has been the demise of Blackberry as a relevant marketer of smart phone devices.
At the end of President Clinton's second administration, Blackberry was riding high. Vice President Al Gore famously said he couldn't get along without his Blackberry. This was a huge endorsement considering the popularity of Clinton's presidency and the booming prosperity of the late 90s. But just a few years later when Apple introduced the iPhone, the Blackberry was doomed because everyone at the company had drunk their own Kool-Aid for so long that they could no longer conceive of how a rival entry into the smart phone market could pose a threat. They were so wrapped up in the idea that Blackberry was the only viable smart phone option that they never saw the bus from Cupertino coming until it had crushed them on the pavement and roared off toward the horizon.
But it's not just companies that have to be wary of single-minded group think. Markets and societies need to be wary of it too. Recall the financial crisis of the last decade. In the middle of the previous decade the popular "wisdom" said that real estate was an asset whose prices could never fall. The only direction for housing prices to go was up, and nobody stopped to question if that was really the case. Banks were so eager to lend money to potential home buyers that they quit requiring documented proof of income, and investment banks were so eager to get a piece of the action that they created more and more elaborate financial instruments to fragment and package individual mortgages into leveraged security bundles that were so complex even the Wall Street wizards constructing them were not sure what would happen if there was ever a problem. But there wouldn't be a problem because it was impossible for real estate prices to ever fall. Right?
A decade earlier the bubble was technology. Five years after the housing bubble there was a bubble in natural resources, primarily oil. Mark Twain's observation on the dangers of buying into the majority opinion are applicable to many areas of life. If you start believing something is iron-clad unshakable truth and everyone you talk to seems to agree--it may be time to stop and reflect and see if maybe there isn't a different way of looking at the same thing.
So now it's your turn. You can respond in comments if you want, or you can spend a few minutes thinking about the following questions for yourself.
Meditation
Finally, at the end of each "Meditation Moment" I'll provide a brief meditation or reflection on the quote. This will be several paragraphs of my own thoughts and how I relate to the quote. Others may have different opinions and that's fine. I don't feel like I want to teach in this blog, but just share some of my insights, ideas, and experiences. I hope there are some who will find them helpful, but in the end it's an outlet for me to do some writing that is a little more creative and philosophical than the dry technical communications I do at work all week. So without further ado...Twain's comment is an observation about the dangers of "group think." This can wind up leading to dangerous or negative consequences in all areas of life. In organizations like companies, it leads to restricted and narrow thinking because "we've always done it this way." This can lead to everyone believing there is only one way and one solution and failure to see competitive threats in the marketplace from either new nimble start-ups or established companies entering new markets. One of the most famous examples of this in the last decade has been the demise of Blackberry as a relevant marketer of smart phone devices.
At the end of President Clinton's second administration, Blackberry was riding high. Vice President Al Gore famously said he couldn't get along without his Blackberry. This was a huge endorsement considering the popularity of Clinton's presidency and the booming prosperity of the late 90s. But just a few years later when Apple introduced the iPhone, the Blackberry was doomed because everyone at the company had drunk their own Kool-Aid for so long that they could no longer conceive of how a rival entry into the smart phone market could pose a threat. They were so wrapped up in the idea that Blackberry was the only viable smart phone option that they never saw the bus from Cupertino coming until it had crushed them on the pavement and roared off toward the horizon.
But it's not just companies that have to be wary of single-minded group think. Markets and societies need to be wary of it too. Recall the financial crisis of the last decade. In the middle of the previous decade the popular "wisdom" said that real estate was an asset whose prices could never fall. The only direction for housing prices to go was up, and nobody stopped to question if that was really the case. Banks were so eager to lend money to potential home buyers that they quit requiring documented proof of income, and investment banks were so eager to get a piece of the action that they created more and more elaborate financial instruments to fragment and package individual mortgages into leveraged security bundles that were so complex even the Wall Street wizards constructing them were not sure what would happen if there was ever a problem. But there wouldn't be a problem because it was impossible for real estate prices to ever fall. Right?
A decade earlier the bubble was technology. Five years after the housing bubble there was a bubble in natural resources, primarily oil. Mark Twain's observation on the dangers of buying into the majority opinion are applicable to many areas of life. If you start believing something is iron-clad unshakable truth and everyone you talk to seems to agree--it may be time to stop and reflect and see if maybe there isn't a different way of looking at the same thing.
So now it's your turn. You can respond in comments if you want, or you can spend a few minutes thinking about the following questions for yourself.
- Are there opinions I hold that seem to be shared by everyone I know or meet?
- Can I articulate my own reasons for holding those opinions without relying on the spoken (or unspoken) "everybody knows that..." argument?
- If someone challenges my opinion on that topic, can I answer that challenge without sounding like every talking head I've ever heard?
Additional Reading
At the end of each meditation, I'll offer up some links to additional reading.
Paperback
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Paperback
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Kindle
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Kindle
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