I have come to imagine the classical university as being a prototypical T.E.D. conference, a place where the power of an idea was carried not only by its intellectual content, but also by the theatricality of its presentation.
Fast forward to the present in Santa Barbara, California, where I am a graduate student. Are people filled with a spirit of learning at the university? The answer is yes only if by the word, "spirit," one really and cynically means, "weariness."
Some of the most capable people in the post-graduate ranks feel uninspired or disempowered. They may enter graduate school full of creativity and find that after about a year, the light within them no longer burns as brightly as it once did.
Knowing exactly why this happens is difficult, but one cannot help but suspect that it has something to do with academic culture.
Perhaps someday I will speak as well as Demosthenes. But if I do, then it will be a skill I will not have learned in graduate school.
Mark C. Taylor:
Managers have to learn to ask every few years of every process, every product, every procedure, every policy: "If we did not do this already, would we go into it now knowing what we now know?" If the answer is no, the organization has to ask, "So what do we do now?" And it has to do something, and not say, "Let's make another study."
