To plan or not to plan
Saturday, October 15th, 2005An on-and-off topic of debate I sometimes have with myself is the popular question of "what do I want to be when I grow up?".
I recently was rummaging through the magazines on the coffee table at some friends’ apartment, and found a copy of Fortune Magazine’s March 21 2005 issue. What caught my eye was not the word "Fortune", emblazoned though it was across the cover in bright red characters, but the sub-title "The best advice I ever got".
It turns out that the they had asked a whole bunch of business-type high flyers what was the best advice that they had ever gotten, and they had then collected and published the results. Flipping through, I found pages of these words of wisdom from the likes of Warren Buffett, Jack Welch, Meg Whitman and so on. There were some funny ones, like Richard Branson’s "Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you won’t survive."
The funniest thing was that they put the "best advice" from Klaus Kleinfeld, CEO of Siemens, next to the "best advice" from Ann Fudge, Chairman and CEO of Young & Rubicam Brands. Mr. Kleinfeld said: "Keenly visualize the future." Ms. Fudge said: "Don’t chart your career path too soon."
Huh? So who do we listen to? I guess I should stop here and go work on keenly visualizing the dozens of alternative career paths that I may take, things I may do when I grow up … after all, I don’t want to pick that ideal career path too soon, do I? Oooh… all that keen visualization is making me tired …
