Thomas Friedman, escritor y columnista del New York Times, es uno de nuestros escritores preferidos fuera del puro ámbito de las inversiones. Su libro The World is Flat nos abrió los ojos acerca de cómo estaba cambiando el mundo en áreas como la tecnología, la educación y sus efectos en la futura vida profesional. Con motivo de la publicación de su último libro, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, ha sido entrevistado por la revista de la consultora Deloitte (Deloitte Review). La entrevista es interesante ella entera, pero os adjuntamos a continuación un extracto directo de la misma, con los 5 consejos que él daría a nuestros hijos de cara al futuro y la actitud que deberían adoptar para sobrevivir a un mundo que está cambiando a una velocidad sin precedentes:

 

«The first is to always think like an immigrant. How does the new immigrant think? New immigrants think, “I just showed up here in Bethesda, and there is no legacy spot waiting for me at the University of Maryland. I better figure out what’s going on here, what the opportunities are, and pursue them with more energy, vigor, and more PQ and CQ than anybody else.” So my first rule is always think like an immigrant, because we’re all new immigrants to the age of accelerations.

 

Second, always think like an artisan. This was an idea I got from Larry Katz at Harvard. Larry points out that, before mass manufacturing, before factories, work was artisanal. Work was built around artisans, and the artisan made every chair, every table, every lamp, every fork, knife, spoon, plate, glass, pitcher, shoe, dress, suit, underwear, stirrup, saddle—all that was made by an artisan. And what did the best artisans do? They brought so much personal value-add, so much unique extra, to what they did that they carved their initials into their work at the end of the day. So always do your job [in a way that] you bring so much empathy to it, so much unique, personal value-add, that it cannot be automated, digitized, or outsourced, and that you want to carve your initials into it at the end of the day.

 

Third, always be in beta. I got this idea from Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. Reid likes to say that in Silicon Valley, there’s only one four-letter word. It actually does start with an F, but it isn’t four letters, and that word is “finished.” If you ever think of yourself as a finished product, you’re probably finished. Reid’s motto is, “Always be in beta.” Always be in the state of mind of a piece of software that’s about 85 percent done. You throw it over the wall, the community tests it, finds the holes, finds the glitches, they throw it back, you work on it some more, you throw it over the wall again, they test it, and so on. Always think of yourself as if you need to be reengineered, retooled, relearned, retaught constantly. Never think of yourself as “finished”; otherwise you really will be finished.

 

Fourthly, always remember that PQ + CQ is greater than IQ. Give me a young person with a high passion quotient and a high curiosity quotient and I will take them over a kid with a high intelligence quotient seven days a week. In the age of Google, no one really cares what you know, because the Google machine knows everything. All they care is what you can do with what you know, and I will trust PQ and CQ over IQ over the long term on that.

 

And lastly, always think like a waitress at Perkins Pancake House in Minneapolis. Perkins is my favorite restaurant; I grew up outside of Minneapolis, and there’s a Perkins on Highway 100, France Avenue. I was eating breakfast there with my best friend, Ken Greer, when I was working on a book back in 2011. I ordered three buttermilk pancakes with scrambled eggs and Ken ordered three buttermilk pancakes with fruit, and the waitress took our order and came back in 15 minutes. She put our two plates down, and all she said to Ken was, “I gave you extra fruit.” That’s all she said. I gave her a 50 percent tip. Why? Because that waitress didn’t control much, but she controlled the fruit ladle, and what was she doing back there in the kitchen? She was thinking entrepreneurially. She was thinking to herself, “You know? I’m going to give this guy an extra dollop of fruit.” See what happens? Turns out, he was sitting with a chump like me, and I saw that, and I said, “That’s kind of cool. I’m giving you a 50 percent tip.” She was thinking entrepreneurially. So my advice to my girls is, “Whatever you do, whether you’re in the public sector or the private sector, whether you’re on the front lines or a manager, always think entrepreneurially.” Always think, “Where can I fork off and start a new company over here, a new business over there?” Because [huge manufacturing companies are] not coming to your town with a 25,000-person factory. That factory is now 2,500 robots and 500 people. So we need three people starting jobs for six, six people starting jobs for twelve, twelve people starting jobs for twenty. That’s how we’re going to get all those jobs. We need everyone thinking entrepreneurially.»

 

Consejos sabios que, al final del día, se pueden aplicar a cualquier ámbito de nuestras vidas, y por supuesto a las inversiones. Recuerden, esto va de actitud y aptitud.

 

Irrational Investors

 

Disclaimer:

No tenemos posiciones en ninguna acción mencionada, y no planeamos iniciar posiciones dentro de las próximas 72 horas.

Escribimos este artículo nosotros mismos, y expresa nuestras propias opiniones. No recibimos  compensación por ello . No tenemos ninguna relación comercial con ninguna compañía cuyas acciones se mencionan en este artículo.

Las opiniones contenidas en este documento son sólo informativas y educativas y no deben interpretarse como una recomendación para comprar o vender las acciones mencionadas o para solicitar transacciones o clientes. El rendimiento pasado de las compañías discutidas puede no continuar y las compañías pueden no alcanzar el crecimiento de ganancias según lo previsto. La información contenida en este documento se considera adecuada, pero bajo ninguna circunstancia una persona debe actuar sobre la información contenida en el mismo. No recomendamos que cualquier persona actúe sobre cualquier información de inversión sin primero consultar a un asesor de inversiones en cuanto a la idoneidad de tales inversiones para su situación específica.