How to Become a Singular Presence
It was Bizarro World. Seventeen teachers sat in classroom seats while four students took turns lecturing to them. Unlike most classrooms in Emerson High School, the occupants in this one were paying rapt attention during the five minutes allotted each speaker. The eye contact was intense enough to require sunscreen.
This thirty-minute meeting was the complete audition and final vote for the first (and only) exchange student that Emerson would ever produce. The year was 1963, and an entrepreneurial local newspaper reporter had arranged for a Finnish student he had met to spend a half-year in each of the public high schools in Union City, New Jersey, a poor city, at the time the most densely populated city in the United States (fifty thousand people in about two square miles).
The ācommittee of seventeenā had chosen four nominees to be the return student (who would spend six weeks touring Europe, ending in Finland over the summer, since none of us was about to learn Finnish). They chose the quarterback and captain of the football team; the president of the yearbook; the president of the class; and me, the president of the student council and editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. We were apprised of the selections (back then no one argued about fairness or gender) and asked if we would accept if chosen, our parents were consulted, and then we were told to prepare to answer a question in front of the committee. The five-minute interview would determine, by immediate majority vote thereafter, who would have his life incredibly changed.
It was the height of the Cold War, and the question was this: How would you defend the United States to people you meet in Europe when youāre asked about our foreign policy?
I had luck and pluck. Luck because my last name starts with āW,ā and I was to be last in the alphabetic order. But hereās the pluck. I had an inkling that this trip would have a profound change on my life, and I knew we could not just afford any college. I also knew that my hometown of Union Cityāthe āembroidery capital of the worldā proclaimed the cityās sign as you shot by on the way to the Lincoln Tunnel and New Yorkāheld no future for me. I decided that I couldnāt risk simply giving a better but similar answer to the others.
I had to give a completely different answer to truly stand out from everybody else. My turn was approaching.
āI wouldnāt defend the United States,ā I told the room of suddenly bolt-upright teachers. āI would explain who we are and how weāre more similar to their own country than dissimilar.ā I went on from there.
All the way to Europe.
In those five minutes, my life was changed. I sailed on the original Queen Mary, visited nine countries, took my first airplane rides, met with the U.S. general who commanded our Berlin forces, and even dated a future Miss Finland.* My life changed from black and white to Technicolor. All because I decided that I had better stand out in a crowd, and I understood that I had a better chance of standing out not merely by being better, but by being different.
We are inculcated from youth to blend in, to be one of the crowd, to be accepted. This has a chilling effect later in our lives, as characterized by the āticky-tackyā houses made famous in Malvina Reynoldsās 1960sā song satirizing conformist attitudes. Normative pressure is monstrous. We point out the odd duck, scorn the free spirit, and chastise the rebel while we struggle to keep abreast of the latest lingo (as I write this itās ābaeāā before anyone else), clothing (no matter how uncomfortable), clubs, cars, and furnishings.
There is significant and conclusive research today that we tend to live where people like us live, and join what they join, and act like they act. We are not conformists at birth, but we have āsamenessā drilled into us, as we saw in the frenzy to purchase baby clothes identical to those that Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, used to dress her first child, George.
We must resist this ominous gravity, even to āroyalā taste.
My observations of both entrepreneurs and successful corporate executives, as well as groundbreaking organizations, are that they donāt march to the beat of a distant drummer; they create their uniquely personal music. Here are some examples:
ā¢ The U.S. Marine Corpsā branding (āa few good menā), which accentuated selectivity, scarcity, and high status for enlistment
ā¢ BMWās āultimate driving machineā slogan, when safety and economy were being touted by others
ā¢ Appleās emphasis on design, which subordinated engineering and promoted aesthetics as being important in hardware
ā¢ Certain dog breedersā choice to specialize solely in white German shepherds, which old-school dog snobs consider a freak caused by recessive genes, but which are now immensely popular with the public (as an independent breed, white shepherds would be in the top quartile)
ā¢ Rod Stewartās move from rock to standards, with a voice barely up to it but a passion thatās unmistakable, creating an entirely new following (my wife being a devotee)
How does comfort with ābeing differentā help us in our work? Hereās how I used my exchange student experience to gain a $250,000 project at a major life insurer.
Mindsets: Itās not the āroad most traveled or less traveled.ā Itās the road you create for yourself.
Case Study
An executive vice president of a major insurer, which had just gulped down a company almost equal in size, was interviewing six consultants for a āstrategic communications project.ā His concern was that performance would suffer while people were worrying about their jobs and status.
I sat in the reception area as four of the other consulting firms marched in with laptops and PowerPoint presentations. We had drawn lots for presentation order. I was the only solo consultant there. One of the senior managers had read a couple of my books.
When I was called in, I sat down with just my calendar in front of me. The executive was across from me, and a dozen minions surrounded us. Everyone looked exhausted. Cups with cold coffee sat like sentries all over the room. It was Mad Men without cigarettes.
āWhat would you create to calm people and assure they were focused on their jobs?ā asked the client. āGive us an idea of what you would tell them and when, and by what means.ā He sat back and placed his hands behind his head.
āI wouldnāt tell them anything,ā I said.
He sat back up. So did everyone else.
āWhat was that again?ā
āDo you know which offices youāre closing?ā
āNo, a committee is working on that.ā
āDo you know which officers will remain to head which departments?ā
āNo, the board has a retreat scheduled to decide that.ā
āDo you know which companyās compensation system will prevail?ā
āNo, our accounting firm is giving us advice.ā
āYou donāt know anything, so donāt tell them anything. Simply ask for their concerns, questions, and suggestions. Answer the questions you can, acknowledge those you canāt answer, and let everyone know what those inquiries are. As you get information, answer what you can reliably respond to. Let people know youāre listening, stop worrying about talking.ā
At least ten seconds elapsed, which felt to me like half a day.
āThat is counterintuitive,ā he said, finally.
āIt is,ā I said, not knowing what else to say.
āCancel the last presentation,ā he said to an assistant, and later that day we had worked out a $250,000 project that required a four monthsā span but only about three actual weeks of my time.
I am absolutely convincedābecause Iāve done it thousands of timesāthat simply taking a contrarian or āone-offā view is the secret to success. When someone says to you, āWeāre in California and you live in New York,ā as an excuse not to hire you, youāre probably apt to say, āBut there are nonstop fights, I can absorb part of the expense, Skype is a fine alternative, and Iām happy to make extended visits.ā
Admit it, you do.
What I say is, āThatās exactly why you need me.ā
Then the other person says, āWhy is that?ā NOTICE: The other person is now engaged not in explaining why youāre not a good alternative but rather in trying to understand why you are a good alternative! Thatās when I say: āI bring a different perspective from the East. All of your competitors are using local help and ideas, and they all have cookie-cutter approaches. You need some fresh air. My credentials and experience are not only better, theyāre different. The expense, which Iām assuming is whatās really bothering you, might be an extra $10,000 over the course of the project, but the 5 percent market share increase weāre pursuing would mean another $2 million in revenues. Iād say thatās a pretty minor issue, right?ā
Bill Belichick, the New England Patriotsā head coach, who has won four Super Bowls at this writing, has created plays where people eligible to catch a pass are temporarily ineligible (they must report this to the officials, who inform the other team), and those ineligible are temporarily eligible. It, too, is counterintuitive, until you watch a 325-pound tackle (Nate Solder) who never catches passes actually catch one and rumble like a fast freight train over two defenders into the end zone for a touchdown. Thatās the equivalent to my $250,000 deal. Itās counterintuitive.
And it works, because the other guys donāt expect it.