21A - Reading Reflection No. 2

I chose to read How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams. I have read another one of his books in the past and found that he is a great writer with a lot of insight outside of his most well-known role as the creator of Dilbert.

The general theme of the book is that failure can incite learning. In the book, Adams went on to describe his multiple failures in life, several restaurant ventures as well as his corporate and entrepreneurial careers. He also ended up with several tips for the readers to keep in mind as life lessons about the substantiality in life of things like passion and goals. They are not as important as society makes them out to be.

Something from the reading that translated well to what we have learned in the class is that the most obvious business path is not always right. In recent lectures, Dr. Pryor encouraged entrepreneurs seeking investment to prefer a Venture Capitalist to say “no” to an idea right away than “maybe” because getting strung along is worse in the long run. Adams, in the book, describes several unorthodox ways of thinking about business and introduction into the workplace.

An exercise based on the book that I would design would be to write a broad mission statement about the opportunity we are pursuing and to then narrow the mission statement down in a series of steps so that the students have a lot of time to think about how they are approaching the class and their opportunity.

Adams is a hilarious writer and given his experience that makes his books so informative and easy to read, I would say my biggest surprise moment came when he identified the fact that not everyone has to be good at just one thing. People who are alright at several things can be very valuable in the workplace. This is not something that everyone thinks about because the way that society makes people focus on their singular strengths and weaknesses.