Ten Things to Learn This School Year

I’m on the campus of UCSB this week at family camp, and it’s inspired me to blog about what students should learn in order to prepare for the real world after graduation. This is an opportune time to broach this subject because the school year is about to begin, and careers can still be affected. This is a list of what I wished I learned in school before I graduated.

1. How to talk to your boss. In college, you’re supposed to bring problems to your teachers during office hours, and you share the experience of coming up with a solution. In the real world, you’re supposed to bring solutions to your boss in an email, in the hall, or in a five-minute conversation. Typically, your boss either already knows about the problem or doesn’t want to know about it. Your role is to provide answers, not questions. Believe it or not, but in the real world, those who can do, do. Those who can’t do, share with others who can’t do.

2. How to survive a meeting that’s poorly run. Unfortunately, it could be a while before you run meetings. Until then, you’ll be a hapless victim of them, so adopt these three practices to survive. First, assume that most of what you’ll hear is pure, petty, ass-covering bull shiitake, and it’s part of the game. This will prevent you from going crazy. Second, focus on what you want to accomplish in the meeting and ignore everything else. Once you get what you want, take yourself “out of your body,” sit back, and enjoy the show. Third, vow to yourself that someday you’ll start a company, and your meetings won’t work like this.

3. How to run a meeting. Hopefully, you’ll be running meetings soon. Then you need to understand that the primary purpose of a business meeting is to make a decision. It is not to share experiences or feel warm and fuzzy. With that in mind, here are five key points to learn about running a meeting: (1) Start on time even if everyone isn’t there because they will be next time; (2) Invite the fewest people possible to the meeting; (3) Set an agenda for exactly what’s going to happen at the meeting; (4) End on time so that everyone focuses on the pertinent issues; (5) Send an email to all participants that confirms decisions reviews action items. There are more power tips for running good meetings, but if you do these five, you’re ahead of 90% of the world.

4. How to figure out anything on your own. Armed with Google, PDFs of manuals, and self-reliance, force yourself to learn how to figure out just about anything on your own. There are no office hours, no teaching assistants, and study groups in the real world. Actually, the real world is one long, often lonely independent study, so get with it. Here’s a question to test your research prowess. How do you update the calendar in a Motorola Q phone with appointments stored in Now-Up-To-Date? (I’ll send a copy of The Art of the Start to the first person with a good answer.)

5. How to negotiate. Don’t believe what you see in reality television shows about negotiation and teamwork. They’re all bull shiitake. The only method that works in the real world involves five steps: (1) Prepare for the negotiation by knowing your facts; (2) Figure out what you really want; (3) Figure out what you don’t care about; (4) Figure out what the other party really wants (per Kai); and (5) Create a win-win outcome to ensure that everyone is happy. You’ll be a negotiating maven if you do this.

6. How to have a conversation. Generally, “Whassup?” doesn’t work in the real world. Generally, “What do you do?” unleashes a response that leads to a good conversation (hence the recommendation below). Generally, if you listen more than you talk, you will (ironically) be considered not only a good conversationalist but also smart. Yes, life is mysterious sometimes.

7. How to explain something in thirty seconds. Unfortunately, many schools don’t have elevators or else students would know how to explain things in a thirty-second elevator pitch. Think mantra (three words), not mission statements (sixty words). Think time, not money, is the most important commodity. Think ahead, not on your feet. At the end of your thirty-second spiel, there should be an obvious answer to the question, “ So what?” If you can’t explain enough in thirty seconds to incite interest, you’re going to have a long, boring career.

8. How to write a one-page report. I remember struggling to meet the minimum page requirements of reports in college. Double spacing and 14 point Selectric typewriter balls saved me. Then I went out into the real world, and encountered bosses who wanted a one-page report. What the heck??? The best reports in the real world are one page or less. (The same thing is true of resumes, but that’s another, more controversial topic for unemployed people who want to list all the .Net classes that they took.)

9. How to write a five-sentence email. Young people have an advantage over older people in this area because older people (like me) were taught to write letters that were printed on paper, signed, stuck in an envelope, and mailed. Writing a short email was a new experience for them. Young people, by contrast are used to IMing and chatting. If anything, they’re too skilled on brevity, but it’s easier to teach someone how to write a long message than a short one. Whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.

10. How to get along with co-workers. Success in school is mostly determined by individual accomplishments: grades, test scores, projects, whatever. Few activities are group efforts. Then you go out in the real world the higher you rise in an organization, the less important your individual accomplishments are. What becomes more and more important is the ability to work with/through/besides and sometimes around others. The most important lesson to learn: Share the credit with others because a rising tide floats all boats.

    What about freeloaders? (Those scum of the earth that don’t do anything for the group.) In school you can let them know how you truly feel. You can’t in the real world because bozos have a way of rising to the top of many organizations, and bozos seek revenge. The best solution is to bite your tongue, tolerate them, and try to never have them on the team again, but there’s little upside in criticizing them.

11. How to use PowerPoint. I’ve seen the PowerPoint slides of professors—it’s no wonder that most people can’t use PowerPoint to sell hybrid cars when gas is $10/gallon. Maybe professors are thinking: “This is a one-hour class, I can cover one slide per minute, so I need sixty slides. Oh, and I’ve written all this text already in my textbook, so I’ll just copy and paste my twelve-point manuscript into the presentation.” Perhaps the tenure system causes this kind of problem. In the real world, this is no tenure so you need to limit yourself to ten slides, twenty minutes, and a thirty-point font—assuming that you want to get what you want.

12. How to leave a voicemail. Very few people of any age leave good voicemails. The purpose of a voicemail is to make progress towards along a continuum whose end is getting what you want. A long voicemail isn’t going to zip you along to the end point of this decision. A good model is to think of a voicemail as an oral version of a compelling five-sentence email; the optimal length of a voicemail is fifteen seconds.

    Two power tips: First, slowly say your telephone number once at the beginning of your message and again at the end. You don’t want to make people playback your message to get your phone number, and if either of you are using Cingular, you may not hear all the digits. Second (and this applies to email too), always make progress. Never leave a voicemail or send an email that says, “Call me back, and I’ll tell you what time we can meet.” Just say, “Tuesday, 10:00 am, at your office.”

One last thing: the purpose of going to school is not to prepare for working but to prepare for living. Working is a part of living, and it requires these kinds of skills no matter what career you pursue. However, there is much more to life than work, so study what you love.

Comments

[duh]

Um, how about math skills and/or having the body of your writing match the title....Top 10 things.....yet there are 12....hhmmmmmmm.....

[Someone Who Knows How To Count]

Dear Mr.Kawasaki,

The one thing you need to learn about "the real world" this year is how to count. The last time I checked, 10 does not equal 12. I highly suggest you take my course, or buy my book, The Art of Counting Like a Pre-schooler. Your boss will even be impressed!

[Kempton]

Hi Guy,

The first little test thing didn't work for me (I was bored) but I was quite happy when I skipped ahead by chance to read your list. Very insightful as usual and I've blogged about it on my own blog.

Cheers,
Kempton
------
P.S. Does prizes always work to attract more comments/emails? Hmm, I am not a book author but may be I can try a cheap version of gift of some sort. I notice the only post that has more comments "currently" on the front "page" of your blog is 73 comments for the Aug 14 entry about "Getting a Job in Silicon Valley".
------
P.P.S. Shameless plug:
My most highly anticipated CBC show is coming up soon,
http://insidethedragonsden.com/

[Chris G]

Guy - thanks for the comments back. You seem like a pretty cool guy! :)

[Allison]

I wish my boss would read this blog. She just did a ppt presentation for her boss on my project. I had 10 slides with 30 point font. It was easy and presented the information a VP needs on a low level project (I am a contractor). She inflated it, with screen shots and more text, to 35 slides.

Love the blog and I read it everyday.

[Cedric]

Hey Guy,
thanks for the advices. I will soon graduate so I will keep it in mind...
The ones that I find the more complicated: 1,2,3,5,7,8,10. Particularly how to explain something in 30seconds

[Timothy Coote]

Any blog posts crticizing education systems always bring in howls of protest, especially when using the term 'the real world'. Academia won't accept the fact that after they have sold the piece of paper saying a person has studied at their institution no one gives a shiitake (sorry Guy couldn't resist). If you have an engineering degree and come out of uni and are looking for a job you are not a qualified engineer, you are unemployed. This is the beginning of your professional life and not the end - welcome to the real world.

[Chris G]

One other point:

Universities and colleges in general are terrifically inefficient institutions that may do something inane like hand out a $50K grant to a grad student to study the frequency of the 'click' that a Click Beetle makes and then all sit and discuss the findings for a solid year. Crazy stuff they sponsor.

They aren't meant to be what the 'real world' (i.e., the American profit-based world) is, are they? But if they were, would the world really be a better place?

Are college's meant to require graduates to take courses on how to write brief emails and how to leave short phone messages? If the college you, Mr. Kawasaki attended had drilled into you your top-12 list here and focused more on teaching 'real world' realities, how much MORE money would you have earned in your career?

That's really the point you're trying to make, isn't it?

**********

Chris,

I have been having trouble with my blogging software. Perhaps the last paragraph of this posting did not appear in your browser or RSS feed:

One last thing: the purpose of going to school is not to prepare for working but to prepare for living. Working is a part of living, and it requires these kinds of skills no matter what career you pursue. However, there is much more to life than work, so study what you love.

Guy

[Leslie Madsen-Brooks]

Three things:

1. Please don't discourage students from coming to my office hours. It's in that one-on-one time that many of them learn how to write well--specifically how to make an argument and defend it.

2. As a teaching tool, text-based PowerPoint presentations suck. Period. I reserve Keynote only for showing images to my students. Students should know how to take notes on their own--providing a digest only makes them write down those points instead of really listening to and participating in class conversations.

3. I have to agree with Paul on his point about technical schools' goals vs. the liberal arts mission. Four-year college students should be learning to think critically, not how to make an ideal PowerPoint presentation. (And yes, I do realize that creating a fabulous PowerPoint presentation can be a sign that one is, indeed, a critical thinker.)

[Chris G]

Guy,

"Ego check on aisle 6, ego check on aisle 6"

I really think you should start work on your music CD Mr. Kawasaki. After all, you've mastered the rest of life, haven't you? Eddie Murphy and Bruce Willis both have music CD's ... seems like a natural step for somebody as gifted as yourself.

Can everything in the world really be done better simply by squeezing it down? Resumes? Email? Phone mail? Reports? Meetings? You sound like you're the king of efficiency. Very impressive. I'm sure you've made piles of dough from it.

What life IS about is the conversation one engages in during a meeting about a co-worker's cancerous grandmother, witnessing the nasty repartee between people who don't like each other in meetings and over email, the pre-meeting jokes that are only funny because they're not at all funny, the 49-slide PPT presentation in 8pt font a VP pulls out, the chuckles you send back and forth on your Berry during a meeting where your boss blabbers on for a few hours, watching the guy who is guaranteed to fall asleep during a meeting, etc.

Contrary to what you preach, life isn't about making more and more money by trying to aim for nothing less than 99.999% personal efficiency and productivity, Guy. Life is about all the stuff AROUND the really efficient bits.

******************

Chris,

Blogging, by definition, requires a degree of ego mania. What can I say? Luckily, it is very easy to not read anyone's blog. :-)

If everyone were more efficient in their email, PPT, and meetings, then we would all have more time for life, Chris.

Guy

[Z Houle]

Good post, but 1) is a little misleading. If you bring too many solutions to a hyper-competitive boss, particularly in a pseudo gov't org where it's hard to fire people, you risk making her feel that much more inadequate and, thus, much more open to tearing you a new one whenever and however -- in public or not. And, thus, making life difficult for yourself (ie. making one more angry and miserable) and the significant other you go home to.

Having a brain scares the sh_t out of people, I find, generally, too. Personally, I've just learned that the key to success in business is just hiding the fact that you have a brain and just holding your nose. Passion may count for something, too, but being passionate about something doesn't really matter when nobody else gives a crap about it. I learned this the hard way, and, man, being in debt just sucks.

[astephens]

As a high school teacher, I appreciate your post. I wish more people outside of education would reflect upon the skills students actually need to know to be successful after graduation. Maybe if more people took an interest we could move passed standardized testing to skills that actually matter.

Feel free to read my top ten list...
http://musingsfromtheacademy.wordpress.com/2006/08/23/ten-things-high-school-graduates-need-to-know/

[Karn Griffen]

Guy,

Great post. I also though Intel-based computers were superior at that time too, until my boss gave me a Mac Mini for my birthday. Now I'm hooked!

Thanks,
Karn

[one9]

Once again, great post, Guy.
Although, I feel that the most important lesson is what you said at the end: "so study what you love". To take it a step further and say (not to sound too cliche) but pursue the type of work that you love to do and the $$ will follow.

Btw, just saw your vid "Art of Start". It brought back bad memories..I had a interview at google in 2002 that I (ignorantly) rejected becuz, at the time , I didn't want to commute from SF, and thought it was just going to be another dot.bomb startup :( I'm sure that can be another lesson you won't learn in school. :)

Anyway, great presentation, thanks for putting it out there!

[James Omdahl]

Thanks for the spot-on post Guy.

My worst classes in college were “Business Writing” classes. I remember trying to explain to my professors that writing emails that are a page long in the name of “correctness” wasn’t going to cut it in the real world. They just didn’t seem to get it.

There is something to be said for having some real world experience before you start teaching college kids what is and is not correct in the business world…sadly my biz writing professors had none.

A question for you about PowerPoint Guy – I am presenting at a conference next month and talking about business blogging. I am putting together a PowerPoint with a lot of images (not words or bullet points) that illustrate my points – there are going to be a lot of slides. Do you think I am shooting myself in the foot or can that type of PowerPoint presentation work?

Thanks for your input.

*************

James,

I think you should go with the PPT as you described. If nothing else, it will be so different from anything else that you'll shine.

Look at this as an example:

http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

Guy

[Igor M. (BizMord Marketing Blog)]

Excellent post. I especially liked the coworkers who like to take credit for things they didn't do and the meeting stuff. I see this happen every day.

I'll be sure to Digg this post.

[Stevan]

On running meetings - it is often a good idea to be very specific about the kind of meeting, whether it be a) decision making, b) informational, c) input, d) brainstorming, and maybe there's another category, seems to me I once thought there were five types.

Making sure people know the type of meeting sets expectations and avoids wrong expectations.

[Katrina]

5 points, followed by 5 (stretched out) sentences:

1. Don't attack the person or their current situation (which you know nothing about), that's a political ploy to defend one's ideas, and I know that you dislike politics.
2. I have over 20 years experience in many jobs in many countries, don't assume that I'm just complaining about my current job.
3. I know it's not the 10 commandments, but I think you're not adressing the underlying problems that cause the situations you so eloquently describe.
4. People are versatile human beings and social creatures, you can't change that; they're not machines who work efficiently all day long on one task - despite the wishes of upper management.
5. Negotiation and communication with colleagues are not the tools that grease the wheels of corporations - knowing the right people, doing borderline illegal things, and sucking up are what get you to the top.

The real world is an unjust, unfair, difficult, corrupt, and harsh set of affairs. All the little tips you provide will do nothing more than improve your efficiency at secretarial-type work, and perhaps give you a little more time to write one more piece of code that will become obsolete in 5-10 years. And then your company will lay you off because of "economic conditions" caused by the manipulations and corruption of the government and the federal reserve. Then, when you or your family get sick, you can enjoy the fun of trying to get medical help and finding out who your true friends are. Hopefully, it won't be too long before you find another job in another town and sell your old house for a loss and take on a huge commute just to get to work - and your benefits will kick in once you've been there 12 months (excl. prior conditions).

Kat.

[cubedweller]

Thoughtful and funny write up overall.

As for the comments posted by Kat.....I would not want to work for her at all. It would be exactly her views and attitude that would demoralize and demotivate her direct reports. In essence a self fulfilling prophecy.

Not looking to start a 'flame' war, but I intend to follow this blog from now on.

Nice job Guy.

[Carlos Lone]

Guy,

Great post !!!!. It's so true all the things you have written. Many times colleges and universities focus just in education and pure theory. Real world is so mean, we need to get ready to survive on the battle field. And this is a very valuable toolkit that you have provided to us.

Regards from Guatemala!

[A]

I agree with most of what you said but don't think it's fair to put so much of the blame on professors. I've tried to teach many of these things to my students, and they resist them (perhaps because of what they've learned in other classes). There is always a maximum, not a minimum, length to the papers I assign, and the students complain and try to exceed the limit, because it's easier to turn out 20 pages of unorganized details than to think through what really matters.

And as far as whether you're supposed to bring your problems to your teacher during office hours, I've tried to convince my students to put some thought into it first, then come to me if they're stuck. This not only shows respect for my time, it's actually better for them in the long run. The idea is that they get practice figuring things out on their own, while they still have me as back-up to give hints when they're stuck.

But pushing students to think for themselves is risky. With such huge and growing emphasis on student evaluations, teaching has become a popularity contest - an assistant professor that focuses more on what's good for students than on what they enjoy may not get tenure.

Sorry to get off topic. This is a great list, and I especially like the part about making progress with each voice mail!

[Marilyn Scott-Waters]

Brilliant Guy! Throwing roses and chocolate kisses at your feet! I especially liked "Think mantra, not mission statement" It's hard to be simple.

More please!

Marilyn.

http://www.thetoymaker.com

[ajay]

Guy,
This is very interesting and I hope college students are reading this.
One more point -
Love what you do
OR - Do , what you love.
Many times we don't understand what we really love, and end up in doing what we don't love.And then frustation begins
becuse we are neither ready to love what we do and nor we can find what we love

[Gautam]

Great piece, Guy!

[Andy]

These are really useful. Thanks for sharing them.

By the way, I think many (although maybe not most!) professors know these things, but the rules of the university force them to do things differently. For example, "writing intensive" courses must require papers that are much longer than one page. More importantly, if profs don't give answers (but require students to come with them), if their powerpoint presentations aren't very detailed (but instead sketch the answer and require students to "fill in the blanks"), or if they require students to work in groups (where they can learn how to deal with people who freeload) - all of these things can get profs in trouble on their student evaluations. So they do what their incentives dictate.