Changing lanes with Sydney Pollack

I am going to confess that I had no idea who Sydney Pollack was. When I heard yesterday that he died, I initially had him confused with Sidney Poitier. Even after I saw his picture and recognized him from several movies, I still had no idea he was the director responsible for some of the most memorable films in the past thirty years.

 

My ignorance is surprising given that Pollack played a major character in a movie that very accurately illustrates the moral compromises we often make in the business world. In Changing Lanes he played a partner in a law firm where Ben Affleck’s character was an associate. The plot involves him trying to convince Affleck’s character (who was also his son in law) to forge a signature on a court document. He enlisted the help of his daughter who told Affleck’s character (paraphrasing) the following:

 

“At the level of the law that you’re dealing with, your goal is not the pursuit of truth or justice but to manipulate the system to get the desired outcome.”

 

This makes me think about all the times I have been in a conversation where the primary goal of what I was saying was not to convey the truth but to either positively portray myself and/or to get my listener to do something I wanted. And I am not alone in having done this. In business school, I found the culture to be such that people were constantly “selling themselves” by talking about themselves in the best way possible. While I realize the needs to “sell yourself”, I sometimes wonder if we lose a part of ourselves in the process. Once a friend told me that her friend was at a Duke MBA happy hour and later described the Fuqua students as “emotionally shallow.” There was another time when I was at He’s Not Here talking to some grad students and when I mentioned I was in business school, one girl sarcastically said(paraphrasing) “oh we know about all you MBA types.” She needed no further explanation as to what she meant by “MBA types.”

 

The most memorable point in the movie came toward the end when Ben Affleck’s character confronted his boss and asked him “how can you live like that?” Pollack’s character masterfully replied:

 

“I can live with myself because at the end of the day I think I do more good than harm. What other standards have I got to judge by?” 

 

Unfortunately the moral logic of the above statement is not limited in today’s world to lawyers and us “MBA types.”

Yet another error in the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an excellent source of information on the business and political worlds. But I am getting sick and tired of the errors on this publication, both in the print version and the internet edition.

I have trouble believing that someone who has never taken a journalism class and with no formal training in writing other than the required classes in college and in business school can spot these errors right away and the staff of the Journal cannot. Either the paper should hire a proofreader, ask its editors to be more aggressive in spotting errors, or put in place a process where anyone from the paper’s summer intern to the average reader can point out these errors to the

The Journal markets its print subscription and internet site access as a bundled product. Since my subscription expires soon, I have embarked on a strategy to keep reading the paper in perpetuity. I have gone onto the web site and suspended home delivery of the paper product until 2014. Between now and then, each day will not count against the number of days remaining on my subscription. Meanwhile, I can continue to read each day’s paper (US, European, and Asian versions) on the internet site.

Since I have been so diligent about pointing out the paper’s faults and errors on this blog, getting to read it for free is the least the Wall Street Journal can do for me.

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The controversial ingredients of happiness

Monday’s Wall Street Journal had a book review of Gross National Happiness by Arthur C. Brooks. Over the past three years I have thought much about what exactly makes one happy. From my personal experience, I can tell the source of much of my happiness has to do with finding a meaningful community, making a connection to members of such a community, and also disconnecting from some of the things that the more secular elements of my life claim to be important.

 

“In “Gross National Happiness,” Mr. Brooks has assembled an array of statistics to measure the mood of America's citizens and to discover the reasons they feel as they do. Most often he cites polls that ask for self-described happiness levels, matching up the answers with various beliefs, habits, life choices or experiences.”

 

One of the more controversial claims in the book is that people with certain political affiliations are happier than others.

 

“At the end of the day, Mr. Brooks notes, "political conservatives take the happiness prize hands down." Those who identify themselves as conservative or very conservative, he says, are twice as likely to say that they're very happy as those who identify themselves as liberal or very liberal. What explains the rightists' relative bliss? It seems that a conservative political disposition exists alongside other happy habits of being.”

 

I agree with this. About a month ago I was entertaining myself by using the North Carolina State Board of Elections web site to lookup the voter registration records of some of my business school professors. In North Carolina, one can register as either Republican, Democrat, or as unaffiliated. With the exception of the ones who were registered as unaffiliated, I correctly guessed the political party affiliation of each and every professor that I took a guess on.

 

It’s difficult to describe the qualitative metrics that I used to estimate the political preferences of the professors. But I do remember that one professor struck me as a strong Republican because of his ability to tell self-deprecating jokes about himself. Everything else about his mannerisms conveyed that he was very happy about his life, his profession, and where he was in life. In contrast, I correctly guessed that another professor was a Democrat based on his classroom demeanor which conveyed that he did not want to be there.

 

The author wrote something else which is also quite applicable.

 

“In an observation of particular relevance at the moment, Mr. Brooks says that political "extremists" – who comprise 10% to 20% of the population – may be among the happiest people in America, because they "believe with perfect certainty in the correctness of their political dogmas."”

 

Perhaps this explains why I am so happy.

Looking back and planning ahead

One year ago tomorrow I graduated from business school with my MBA. The past twelve months have been both challenging and disappointing. When I started this blog almost three years ago I was in the process of preparing for business school. While I had concerns about whether UNC (or even going to business school in general) was the right choice for me, never in my wildest dreams would I have expected my job search to last almost an entire school year.

 

In some ways I feel as though I spent three years in business school. The first two going to class and last one looking for a job while reflecting on my MBA experience. Over the past three years the words “A place for me to share my thoughts and hopes as I go through the MBA program at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School” have served as an appropriate description for this blog. However, going forward the blog will be less focused on business school and more focused on other aspects of my life.

 

Over the next couple of days I will be rebranding the blog to more accurately reflect the topics I will be blogging about. While I haven’t finalized on what the new blog description will be,  I imagine it will revolve around my life as a young professional the Chapel Hill and will cover the myriad of topics I am interested ranging from technology, politics, my Christian faith, all the way to the latest rumors on the internets.

 

Stay tuned!

The Boston Globe looking to hire a proofreader

I was bored at work earlier this week and read a news article about the market for used sport utility vehicles. Because of the recent high gas prices, selling one of these high gas consumer vehicles is harder than ever. According to CNW Marketing Research, it took 66 days to sell a used SUV in April and the average sale took place at a 20 percent discount from the Kelley Blue Book value. This parallels what I have been seeing at the lot of the used car dealership near where I live.

 

The reporter goes on to write about the challenges facing current SUV owners.

 

“Frustrated and unable to afford prices at the pump, Nizami last month turned over the Toyota to a dealer who only sells vehicles from private owners. Nizami is still paying the $450 loan but now is bumming rides to work with a cousin and worrying about making enough from the sale to cover the car loan.”

 

In other words Nizami borrowed $450 to finance the purchase and is worried he won’t be able to resell it at a price high enough to cover the amount still outstanding on the loan. The mainstream media would have you believe that the economy is pretty bad but it’s not that bad that an SUV owner has to worry about a $450 loan.

 

The Boston Globe should hire a new business reporter. I’d take the job but unfortunately I already have one.

Out and about in Chapel Hill

I was driving back to the office during my lunch hour today when I saw the above in front of my windshield. Motricity is the local start up I had blogged about earlier - it recently purchased a company in Seattle only to later announce that it would be laying off most of its employees and require the remaining ones to move to Seattle. The laid off employees’ last day in the office was this past Friday.

Judging from the make of the vehicle and the audacity of using one’s company name as the license plate, the driver of the above vehicle is probably one of the upper level executives who will relocate to Seattle. I wonder if he will be able to get the same license plate in Washington State.