Kevin Vogelsang

Education through athletics is incredibly undervalued.

In school, I played varsity basketball, ran track, and played football.  I started playing because it’s what my friends did, I thought I could be good at it, and I wanted to compete.

Eventually in college, I realized athletics was the most important piece of my overall education.  I didn’t fully realize this until a sales class that I took at Sloan.  Bill Aulet was talking about hiring, and one of the main things he wondered about people was “did they play competitive sports?”

In US high schools, class room learning just isn’t that good.  You learn next to nothing about yourself, teamwork, leadership, politics, and performance. You certainly don’t learn toughness.

In the US, athletics is the only arena where performance is closely measured.  There’s stats on everything.  Through the entire education system, it’s also the only arena where you’re judged on your performance.  If you aren’t performing, you lose your job or your starting position.  This is important.

For nearly 20 years, I poured the majority of my energy and focus into athletics.  And it took me 20 years to realize the educational value–the value of understanding the athlete’s mindset.

It always pains me to hear people tell kids that they need to focus on classwork.  Our education system is full of flaws.  But I think one thing we need to value more is motivation. If a student enjoys something (anything) and is willing to work hard it, push them forward.  They’ll learn more doing that than half-ass reading Great Expectations and Frankenstein.  When it comes to valuable experience, my time as an athlete is the most important experience I’ve had, even more important than MIT or any work experience.  It’s where I learned all the core skills everyone should learn.

For business, particularly for startups, the competitive sports team is the closest experience you can get in school: You pick your team and go find a way to win.

-Kevin
2.2.2010

Does Money follow Awesomeness?

I suppose I should give a rough definition to Awesomeness.  If I’m Awesome, this means I add enough value to qualify me as being awesome.   A person can be awesome in many ways–through their attitude, intellect, social skills, adventurous spirit, work ethic, etc.  These channels add up to a person’s general Awesomeness.

My hypothesis:  Awesomeness is unrelated to income.  I’d say income correlates most heavily with luck and how much one cares about having money.  To be rich, it probably does help to be awesome at something.  But, there’s a lot of ways to be awesome out there and not all of them will make you rich, so Awesomeness is unrelated to income*.  (If anything, I’d say Awesomeness has a negative correlation with caring about money.  Awesomeness only cares about being Awesome.)

So how do we compensate Awesomeness?  This is a serious problem, as the agents involved in any situation will respond to the incentives provided.  And we definitely want to incite Awesomeness.  How could anyone be opposed to that?

Well, what does every person care about and appreciate?

Recognition.**

This doesn’t mean that people are walking around trying to get recognized, but when recognition is received, people do appreciate it, even if they feel sheepish for receiving it.

So is Awesomeness being compensated?  Are Awesome people getting recognized?

Some are.  Most aren’t I’m guessing.  And if we want Awesomeness, this is something we should work to solve.

First step: go out and recognize Awesomeness whenever you can.

-Kevin
11.11.2009

*An analogous situation applies to companies.  Awesome companies fail all the time.  This is why venture capitalists will sometimes talk about “value captured.”  For instance, you might have an awesome product that a lot of people use and maybe love, but you might not necessarily be able to turn that into dollars.  YouTube is Awesome, but they’re ruining it by littering it with ads and trying to turn that Awesomeness into dollars.  Wikipedia is definitely Awesome, and it’s a non-profit–I don’t think a for-profit model would work at all for them.

I’m not saying making money is a bad thing.  I’m just saying money does not necessarily come with Awesomeness.

**To further my point, I’d say Money is often used as a substitute/proxy for Recognition (“I’m not doing anything Awesome, but I’m making money” or “I’ve made a lot of money, so I’m Awesome”).  Undoubtedly, Money is used for personal validation and recognition.  What good is having a lot of cool stuff if no one cares?

To build something awesome, you absolutely need 1) time and 2) community.

I find people are compelled to say that passion, resources, opportunity are the essentials.  These are all important, and you or I could probably make a great case for them.  But, I’m not sure they’re absolutes.

I do know you need time.  Time is the most important thing we have.  Few things affect us as much as time.

Time doesn’t necessarily mean only “the limited quantity of time that we have.”  Time also includes “timing.”

The necessity of community is a little less obvious.  Richard Hamming hits the nail on the head:

I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don’t quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. –Richard Hamming, Talk at Belcore, 1986

If you’ve ever worked on a really hard problem, particularly one that’s never been solved, you’ll probably understand.  Are you on the right track?  Is it working?  Does it matter at all?    If you’re working in a bubble,  you lose sight of the answers to these questions.

-Kevin
11.10.09

(You can follow me on Twitter @KevinVogelsang)

Today’s issue of USA Today has a great write-up highlighting two of my

Me, Deron Brown, Mike Fitzgerald, Rick Mancuso

best friends, Deron Brown and Mike Fitzgerald.  You can check it out by going here.

USA Today’s Kelly Whiteside did a good job with the write-up, but there is always more to a story that gets the spotlight in a national media outlet.

Since I played for MIT Football for 4 years and played with Deron and Fitz for 3, I thought I’d add a few thoughts:

Deron Brown didn’t get into MIT because he’s good at football.  None of us did.  Back when I got admitted to MIT, I had a number of people say to me, “You got into MIT?  Oh, you’re a football player, that’s why…”  As if to say, I got a free pass.

I saw similar sentiments in the comments of the article. Don’t believe it.  Deron Brown got into MIT because he understands how to commit to something, work hard at it, and perform. You can show you know how to do that in many arenas, although athletics might be one of the best in my opinion.

Don’t underestimate the adverse effects of going to school at MIT.  The stress, less than ideal diet, lack of lifting, and lack of sleep are in complete opposition of what a top-notch athlete needs to perform.  I would lose over 2o pounds over the course of the season (which is significant when you’re a wide receiver with not a lot of weight to lose anyway).

(With this in mind, I’d love to see what an NFL team could do with a guy like Deron once they got him on a good diet and a weight program.)

Mike Fitzgerald isn’t just a wizard statistician.  He’s also one of the best wideouts to play at MIT. He also played in the Massachusett’s All-Star Game in high school.  And to stress the point, he did pick Lester Hudson for the Celtics.  If I were the Celtics, I’d be offering Mike Fitzgerald (and Kyle Johnson)  a position right now.  In 5 years, they’ll likely be the best brains in the sports management business.

Robert "The UtzBus" Utz

Don’t forget the supporting cast.  Last year, MIT had a .500 record (which admittedly was disappointing considering the talent we had, MIT takes its toll) and Deron had his breakout year thanks to guys like Robert “The UtzBus” Utz (MIT Fullback, currently grad student at Maryland) and James Oleinik (DIII All-American Lineman, bunch of other academic and athletic awards as well).

Only a select few can make it into MIT and make the four-year commitment to playing varsity football and performing at a high level.  Guys like Deron, Fitzy, James, and UtzBus are the type of guys you want on your team, no matter the context, because when you go to bat, and you’re in the arena, you know you got guys behind you that know how to  take care of business.  Few understand that like they do.

Kevin
11.3.2009

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

-Teddy Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena, 1910

The “Man in the Arena”, as dubbed by Teddy, is a powerful psychological symbol.

Criticism has its place.  I can’t remember a time when I made a significant decision that wasn’t criticized.  Criticism is the companion of responsibility.  Criticism helps ensure commitment to decisive action.

And while criticism has its place, critics are relegated to the sidelines.

We are quick to criticize the “Man in the Arena”, but he makes the ground more fertile for others.  Others will stand on his shoulders to see farther.

-Kevin
11.2.2009

A few months ago, I was on my way to the gym listening to the Harvard Business Ideacast.  The episode was entitled “The 5 Leadership Essentials” and featured work done by Dave Ulrich, a Professor of business at the University of Michigan and co-author of the The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead by.

Dave’s book attempts to answer the questions, “What is it that effective leaders have to know or do?  And are there common themes?”  Dave’s team surveyed established thought leaders on the topic and distilled their collective experiences down to five essentials. The five essentials for a leader are as follows:

• Strategic Thinking (has a position on the future)
• Talent Management (manages and engages people)
• Talent Development (develops the future people of the organization)
• Execution (gets things done)
• Personal Proficiency (takes care of themselves)

Based on my experience, these essentials do a pretty good job of boiling down the complex topic of leadership to some common themes.  But, one thing struck me as missing: commitment.

To be an effective leader, you need to be committed to the cause and committed to the people.  That’s the foundation for any leader.

Kevin
9.13.2009

It occurred to me the other day that I didn’t really know much about how good research organizations are run, so I took the time to go in to ask my Bioengineering academic advisor some questions about running a lab.

My advisor is an older Professor that really takes the time to talk wtih his advisees, so he happily agreed to meet with me. Although, he was a little confused by the request, and asked me “What is it exactly that you want to know this stuff for?”. I told him that studying organizations is what I do and that I wanted to know more about how successful labs are run, so I asked him some questions about the structure of lab organizations and found what I basically expected, they’re all different and they function in a manner that reflects the values the leadership and members uphold. The Principal Investigator acts as the figurehead, manager, and coach.

Since this is largely what I expected, I had a hidden agenda as well. It occurred to me that many of the researchers I knew (that is, people that actually do the labor of research) typically weren’t the types you’d expect to see running high performance organizations. Moreover, I’ve begun to feel that leadership can’t be learned. Like many characteristics and abilities, it can be improved, but the visceral elements have to be there first. So I asked, “What set you apart?” and got him going on the story of his success.

People are generally a bit hesitant to talk about themselves for a prolonged amount of time, but once you get them going, they really enjoy it. And I could tell he was starting to enjoy himself.

His response boiled down to two things: No Fear and the Ability to Motivate. At some point Robert Langer’s infamous lab came up to put the icing on the cake, as Professor rather emphatically stated,”Langer is so successful because he Inspires people.” This is a theme that comes up over and over again when one studies successful people.

But, I learned something else that was much less expected. Once the conversation had come to a close, Professor looked at me and said, “In all my years running this lab, I don’t think I’ve ever really had anyone ask me these things.”

It’s true, people just don’t naturally ask questions of genuine interest to those around them. This isn’t new to me. But, I was nonetheless a bit stunned. Here’s a man with an international reputation and a leader in cancer research and no one has asked him about his success and his story in over thirty years as a world-class scientist. I did find that surprising and a bit of a shame.

Kevin
3.25.2009