“We are speaking where we stand, and we shall stand afterwards in the presence of what we have said.” – Wendell Berry
When I moved from investment banking to equity research, I started doing something I’d never really done before: say what I thought.
Of course, I didn’t know that I hadn’t done it, didn’t realize it in real-time, but when I had built my financial model, and it was time for me to make a stock recommendation –– buy or sell –– I agonized. One of my colleagues called me a shrinking violet. Not exactly kind, but that was a shot across the bow. Did I really not know what I thought? Or, if I did know, did I not dare, or was I not willing to say it out loud?
As an equity analyst, I was going to make someone unhappy. If an investor was short, they were going to be unhappy with a buy recommendation. If the investor was long, they were going to be unhappy with a sell recommendation. This included the owners of the company I was modeling, like Carlos Slim, who, at the time, was one of the wealthiest people in the world.
Making people unhappy had not been in my purview before, nor is it in my nature. It was a very uncomfortable moment of reckoning for me. I remember realizing that the only safe harbor was my conviction, because NO MATTER WHAT, someone would be unhappy. I needed to have an opinion. And I needed to have conviction around that opinion.
I subsequently had the opportunity to work for and with one of the great thinkers of our time, Clay Christensen (Peter Drucker was the first; Clay was on the list one year), and this past week, I interviewed Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove, the founders of Thinkers50, a ranking (and a community) of management thinkers globally.
When I asked them what makes a good thinker, their answers were interesting. You’ll want to listen to the entire interview, especially if you are interested in the genealogy of management thinking. Here’s a sampling of what they said the qualities were: a solid purpose, positive intent, and the ability to distill complicated ideas into something evocative and memorable. In other words, the ability to communicate those ideas.
It’s something to aspire to. I think that’s one of the reasons so many people want to write books, give speeches, and do podcasts. There is a desire to do something good in the world, and a recognition that for one’s ideas to spread, we have to be able to communicate them.
Some years ago, I encountered the work of American novelist/essayist Wendell Berry. I’m thinking particularly of a book of his essays titled Standing By Words. The belief that this is an important human endeavor—to speak for what we believe and stand by that—has grown with me over time.
Sometimes, people have asked me what I learned—the big takeaways from being an equity analyst; and while I loved picking stocks, spotting momentum (which I now do with people rather than investments), one of the most valuable lessons I learned was to think, and to say what I think—having an opinion backed by conviction and standing for something.
What do you think?
What do you feel strongly enough about, have enough conviction about, that you are willing to go on the record with it?
To stand by it?
As always, thanks for being here!
All best,
Whitney
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