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This is my first week receiving Paul's email so I feel I need to comment on a few points:

1. We met this week at NTU, doing the same Chinese class so I can echo his sentiments. The structure and methods of learning are making it much simpler than I had ever imagined it would be. Was a bit shocked at the requirement of writing Traditional Chinese, but I seem to be keeping up.

2. A thank you to Paul himself - during the obligatory round-robin of new classmates "this is what I do...blah blah blah", Paul mentioned he was a writer. Through his encouragement, I published my first "story" this week on Medium. I ensured he was in the room when I pressed publish. It was a joy to finally do it, but also an added joy to press send next to the guy who encouraged me, and even took time out to read my draft.

3. Totes on the decline of business schools. I'd go so far as to say that formal education is going through a Darwinian epoch on steroids. Digital has democatizied so much. Due to pandemic, it will now democratize higher education, while also reducing the demand for the few that survive without the dollars that international undergrad, post-grad, and executive education dollars bring in.

4. Re Finance eating Culture, I immediately got excited. I love that quote from Drucker about culture eating strategy for breakfast. It had its time and place in the lexicon of management theory, but having worked in strategy roles for most of my career, and in companies with cultures ranging from excellent to dubious, I found it mostly misguided. When I saw the heading I put on my boxing gloves! I was a bit let down the I read the actual blog and reluctantly took off my gloves.

Last week I was asked to sit in with a management team as they debated how to foster the right culture to attract new talent - not just younger people, but people of all ages and experiences. Their intention was pure, and they truly believed a corporate culture was the answer. I tentatively offered: "Surely we have moved beyond this". I'm not sure I was the most popular person in the room when I framed the issue another way:

I am no longer interested in building a "corporate culture." If the last 12 months have taught me anything, it is that people perform their best when they can be themselves. I'm not talking about that corporatized slogan of "bringing your authentic self to work"... that's bullshit is rarely appreciated by the very company that espouses it. I mean, I would want people to know that they can be the most comfortable version of their own identity and the identity of the community in which they belong. Not the identity of the company they work for. I would want to attract people who can do their best work by being themselves, and give them the confidence and security to know that they can do it in my company.

In other words:

Do you know what you love doing? Do you know what you are excellent at? Come and do that with me!

Off my soapbox... I have a lot to thank Paul for this week... I couldn't resist the urge to write. Don't worry...I won't be so wordy with comments in the future.

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