Challenge season is upon us (pt 2)

A new round of world-changing opportunities

Can I just tell you how unbelievable some of the opportunities my students get are?

Seriously.

I'm sitting here trying to get my students hyped for the Global Challenge (just kicked off btw) and hoping they feel the same amount of excitement that I do. Working with CIBC, IKEA, and Walmart during the last challenge was fun and gave students a good opportunity to make an impact.

But now they have a rep under their belts. Now they are 2.5 months the wiser — that's a long time in the TKSverse — so as you might expect, our expectations for the students are even higher. And we have some incredibly cool global partners that we are working with.

It's weird that I need to get students excited about this, but it makes sense. There have been years of conditioning that everything is for some ambiguous time in the future — get good marks to get into a good school to get a good job to have a good future and maybe create some impact along the way.

But what if you can skip right to the end?

What if you can start making an impact TODAY? Wouldn't that be more exciting?

That is what the challenge is all about. But this doesn't quite click for a lot of people. It doesn't seem real. And that's because it's not normal. Not just for teenagers, but for anyone. Even in my own past work with some of the biggest companies in the world, I didn't have opportunities like this.

Okay, sorry. I'll get off my soapbox for now. All that to say the projects students are currently working on are super cool and you’ll hear more about them in the coming weeks.

The way the world works

Over the weekend we talked about what happens if things go right during the challenge, and how this is not just another project. As I wrote in Shattering The Ceiling (I keep referring back to it), the upside of this project is essentially unbounded. Their best-case scenario is literally changing the world. If they put in the work, they could:

• launch a product for a billion-dollar brand

• help create millions of jobs

• make healthcare more accessible to millions

And even if they don't, they'll have a crazy portfolio piece that can help them:

• get a scholarship/admission

• get employment opportunities

• meet important people from around the world (and leave an impression)

Let's talk about Suits for a minute.

If you're not familiar, the show follows the day-to-day of lawyers at the firm Pearson Hardman (back when I watched). Sounds like it might be boring, but the interesting hook is the associate Mike, who gets recruited by Harvey Specter.

In the first episode, he crashes a recruiting event and impresses Harvey. There's just one problem – he didn't graduate from Harvard and Pearson Hardman only recruits from Harvard. Despite this, he makes such an impression on Harvey that they figure out a way to hire Mike.

I remember watching this and finding it thrilling. I started thinking maybe there is another way. I got excited by the idea that if I didn't get into the top school, I can still access the opportunities I want; I don't have to follow the rules.

Guess what? That's not just how it works in TV land.

In many organizations and even educational institutions, if you're someone of high enough value, they are willing to do what it takes to get you. The key here is to be high value to them. Charlie Munger says "How to find a good spouse? The best single way is to deserve a good spouse."

How do we become high-value?

Everyone is chasing the same job, and admission to that school, and they are doing the same things to get it.

Do you know what other people are not doing?

Launching a new product alongside a billion-dollar tech company. Or creating millions of jobs across Africa. Or bringing new at-home diagnostics for important diseases.

But our kids are trying.

Raising the bar

Something I appreciate about TKS is the time we spend leveling up our standards. It's something we are constantly pushing. In preparation for the challenge, we ran a workshop to better understand what great looks like and how we as a team can do a better job coaching our students through the challenge process.

The tricky thing about human growth is that it's not immediately legible. Unlike sports or something metric-driven, there aren't always obvious numbers or stats we can look at to measure improvement. This adds a layer of complexity and nuance to how we push and prod people in ways they need.

Our approach is mostly modelled after some of Jeff Bezos's writing on high standards.

1. Show what good looks like

2. Understand how much work it takes to get there

3. Identify the needle-movers in coaching conversations

This overlaps with what I was used to at Versett. One of our principles was to Raise The Bar. Yes, I'm going to keep talking about Versett in my writing. I think mostly because as an org, I was so personally aligned with the philosophy of learning and high standards. (I should be, I was on the team shaping it). This makes me feel at home at an org like TKS where we are so committed to these standards.

Next up is making sure we continue to raise the standards of students.

🔗 Interesting Links:

1. Calculating the speed of heartbreak – It's a couple of days after Valentine's Day, but I love this. Science x Romance is the collab we all needed but never asked for. It reads a bit like how I remember Junot Diaz's This is how you lose her but with some cheeky formulas.

2. Matt Levine's article in Crypto – Arguably Matt Levine's magnum opus, this 40,000-word article covers a lot about the crypto movement starting from the ground. If you want to learn more about what's been going on in Crypto, with Blockchain, from an entertaining and mostly unbiased view, check this out. Matt's a great writer.

3. The problem of high standards – If you're committed to high standards, you need to enforce them. But you don't have to be; high standards aren't for every person or organization and that's okay.

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