By Jack Cumming
Books are cheap learning, but they don’t come with credentials. Universities are costly, and they award credentials. It wasn’t always so. Most of the moguls of the Gilded Age of America’s business dominance were self-educated. Credentials don’t confer wisdom, derring-do, or a will toward action. They impress academics and some HR departments, but college degrees don’t build businesses.
Elon Musk as Leader
This came to mind while watching Marc Andreessen recount his observation of why Elon Musk has been so successful in managing several businesses at once and winning every time. There’s much we can learn beyond university. Many of today’s senior living executives graduated from business schools, some with a bachelor’s and many with an MBA.
Like Donald Trump, Elon Musk has a degree from the Wharton School. The economics degree was joint with one in physics. From early on, Musk was insatiably inquisitive, and he absorbed learning with a passion.
Application to Senior Living
If you don’t know of Marc Andreessen, you should. He is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the digital revolution. The revolution may not yet have transformed senior living, but it will. It has to. A recent Tim Regan article in Senior Housing News noted that “as it stands, the senior living industry is on pace to fall 50% short of the inventory it needs in 2025.”
Later in the article, he notes:
What all this means for the industry’s chances of meeting demand in the years to come is unclear, and many operators are holding their breath in anticipation of a new administration in 2025. But with each passing year that growth stalls, the industry’s chances to successfully meet the demand of the baby boomers wane.
We can add that the baby boom bonanza is no more than a wave, after which demand for senior services is likely to reverse. That’s not a recipe for success in an industry in which many communities have been allowed to age into near obsolescence. Mr. Regan shares that “in 2023, 45% of all senior living communities were 25 years old or older.” Obviously, the years ahead are going to require new approaches that are less capital-intensive than residential living.
We can’t build fast enough to meet the demand, and if we were able to build that fast, we would be left with an aging oversupply once the demographic wave is past. Senior living needs the flexible dynamic of the digital revolution. Marc Andreessen has been a leader in that revolution from its outset.
Process or Action?
Back to our theme. There’s comfort in following the prescribed processes of textbook business education. Every organization needs a written strategic plan. Right? Working toward that and striving for consensus can keep a CEO busy and complacent.
Then, there’s the need for a written statement of mission, vision, and values. Then, that statement needs to be rewritten to be more pithy and succinct. After all, that’s the elevator speech for the business, and every business benefits from an elevator speech. Right?
Not so quick. As Marc Andreessen tells us, those are the trappings of the approach to business administration that came into being in the 1950s and beyond. Before then, businesses were managed, and entrepreneurs like Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and more “ran” them. College degrees were not needed then to “run” a business.
Andreesen tells us that Musk’s success, educated though he is, is a throwback to the executive style of an earlier era. The surprising thing is that the earlier, less educated style was often more effective than today’s “scientific” style. That makes one wonder just how “scientific” today’s academic concepts of what business should be are in reality. Are they practical or just the imaginings of plausible scholarship?
Business Plans or Business Leadership?
During the Gilded Age, the American business economy prospered to become the largest in the world by the late 1880s or 1890s. Our prosperous economy even now dates from the advances made during that historic era. We still know the names of the great moguls who led that era of American prosperity. How did they do it?
Did Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and others of their time need mission, vision, and values statements? Without thinking, we know the answer. They took that for granted and didn’t waste time with such an exercise.
They were busy accomplishing change, sometimes in ways that we may approve and often with biases that we now abhor. What we admire, though, is how they led their businesses to success. They were leaders, not administrators.
Of course, they all knew their mission. They didn’t need to write it down. Those they led knew the mission as well. These men, and they were mostly men, led by example and utterance. They were not afraid of change, and they took measured risks to innovate, making America great in the process.
While most of the leaders were men, there were also women entrepreneurs, of whom my favorite is Lydia Pinkham, who sold a highly alcoholic herbal tonic for women. She recognized the developing market among women while the men were preoccupied with kerosene, steel, bridges, and finance. Elon Musk is a male mogul of our time.
What Can We Learn From This?
First, it’s never too late for a fresh start and a new outlook. Leaders don’t get mired in process. They are on the move. Marc Andreessen observes of Elon Musk that he moves from one of his entities to the next, seeking out the bottleneck that most hampers that business, and, then, focusing like a laser on eliminating the problems creating the bottleneck. Effective leaders emphasize substance over form and action over CYA.
It’s not that Musk doesn’t delegate. Most of the time, local leaders have full freedom. But Musk is extraordinarily analytical, and he can swoop in with the fresh perspective of an observant consultant, though an adviser with authority, fix a problem, and move on to the next challenge. How many administrators have that focus? Not many.
Second, if you’re 18 years old and unsure what you want to do next, then get a job and try to make a difference. Some people go to college to get a job. That’s fine if you’re thinking of HR departments and credentials. It’s not if your goal is to build a business to better our world.
If you already have your vision in mind and how it can be monetized, start the business. You can always read up on accounting, finance, marketing, operations, organization, legal, and compliance. You will learn far more rapidly and retain what you read longer if you are actively engaged and reading to further your passion.
Click here to get Marc Andreessen’s tips on why Elon Musk is so successful. Of course, it also helps that Elon Musk is intellectually gifted and has the ability to attract other gifted people to want to join him in creating excellence and achieving what seems impossible to many others.
