Changing the world by trying. Living passionately. And a bit on student life.

The premise is that if you’re willing to go through a large amount of arbitrary work to rank high on standardized tests, you’ll also work hard when it comes to the important stuff.

What a shame.

It’s all about working harder. Not better or smarter or more creatively. Just harder.

There’s always someone who can work harder, faster and cheaper than you. Do-exactly-like-I-say people are a commodity and standardized testing selects exactly for these people.

On the other hand, the people who change history are the brilliant, insightful, risk-taking and creative individuals.

Who are you?

If you can’t find deep and genuine gratification in what you’re doing, trying harder to sell your commodity to the mainstream won’t cut it. You’ll have to sell your soul, water it down, pander to the usual suspects and then try to find pleasure in your golf game or bourbon.

The alternative is building something you care for. Like, really. It’s all about taking care of a small group of passionate and loyal followers. Your niche.

In spite of what you might think, that approach even works if you’re selling shampoo, deodorant or mayonnaise.

When I was younger, I did a fair amount of competitive public speaking (ended up finishing 2nd nationwide at one competition).

Turns out public speaking is great life school. Looking back, here’s what I can say:

That nerve-racking, tingling sensation you get in your gut is the best indication you’re doing things right. The more intense, the better. It’s an indication you’re doing work that matters and you’re pushing through were most have abandoned. Seth Godin calls it the lizard brain, that primitive part of your brain that wants you to shut up and be like everybody else.

Becoming good at public speaking not nearly as difficult as you might imagine. So is getting your startup running, learning origami or playing the violin. The hardest part is getting started: just do it.

Failing is not that big of deal. My biggest lesson: get over yourself. We systematically overestimate how terrible failure would be. As soon as you start paying attention to your inner chatter and buying into the “what-if” scenarios, you’re toast.

Yes, you get to choose your customers, not the other way around.

Try to sell commodities at a desperately cheaper price than the competition and you’ll get one type of customer.

Be short-sighted and profit-obsessed and they’ll return the favour.

Or challenge the status quo and build genuinely interesting experiences and you’ll get get another type of customer.

You get to choose. The font on your website, your Twitter feed or the type of music you play in the lobby all set the tone for the conversation.

Choose wisely.

Not so long ago, you needed the approval of Bill in Washington or the blessing of Hollywood or a good review from the New York Times to succeed. Those who had succeeded in the game decided whether you’d succeed in it. They’ve forever been the gatekeepers, the defenders of the status quo.

The Internet is radically changing this. If you’ve built your plan on the idea of suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Stop waiting, put your ideas out there and build a movement now.

Go.

The gatekeepers have lost the keys.

The following is an overview of a manifesto I will publish through ChangeThis. Update: Voting has ended — thanks all!

The evidence is explicit: achievement in business school is not correlated in any way with success in business.

In fact, even holding a business degree at all does not increase likelihood of success, increase either starting or ongoing salary nor increase happiness.

Nothing.

In spite of this, business education has grown exponentially in the last decade.

We believe the old Industrial-age model is flawed. This is a manifesto for a new generation of business schools, the first of which is planned to launch in January 2010. Here are the founding concepts:

No full-time professors. Telling people what to do full-time and doing nothing yourself is bound to corrupt your thinking (no matter how top-notch your research is). To keep teaching, professors must prove they continue to build outstanding and challenging businesses.

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything worthwhile. Too often, school is about suppressing mistakes and about making sure you follow the tried-and-true route. We disagree. To graduate from our school, you need to prove you’ve contributed to society in a meaningful way and built a sustainable business. That’s it. Take the time you want, we’re here to help. The school is part-time only.

The Internet is changing the way we see the world. We’ll make available plenty of TEDTalks and lectures from Khan Academy and Academic Earth. Stand up, discuss and defend your opinion, you’ll develop an understanding of the world like never before.

Meet amazing people. We think school should be about building genuine and long-term relationships and people you care for. We’ll make sure that happens.

It’s a miracle if curiosity survives formal education. That’s Albert Einstein speaking. We’re looking for diversity, creativity, people who get excited and passionate about their projects. And we strive at bringing back the “learning” part of education.

I took a counselling job on an intensive youth leadership camp. As part of that, I’m totally disconnecting myself of the Internet and focusing 100% on the kids for the next two months.

I won’t post until August 15, 2010. Sorry.

In the mean time, you can always snail mail me at:

Sgt David Chouinard - cie C
Centre d’instruction des cadets de l’Armée de Valcartier
Garnison Valcartier
CP 1000, succursale Forces
Courcelette, Qc
G0A 4Z0

As always, thanks for sticking around. It means a lot to me.

That’s not the say they’re unimportant. But they’re certainly overrated.

Some metric-obsesed businesses have completely reshaped their industry for the better (I’m talking of Google, Henry Ford and Amazon here). We need data-focused businesses, no doubt.

But that market is vastly overcrowded.

So many business are built around metrics, whether it be clicks on your homepage, eyeballs a second, visitors, or man hours per unit.

Metrics are easy.

Instead of relying on your insight, passion and unique knowledge (the reason why you’re here in the first place) you chicken out. You can’t argue with metrics, nor do you need genuine understanding of your market. If the numbers say we should do A, then we do A. In no long, everyone in the industry is going to be doing A. A becomes the status quo, the tried-and-true route, the easy path.

Which leads to massive opportunity of doing B instead.

The big guys will always outclass you in that type of thinking. They have far smarter engineers than you, bigger, better, faster infrastructure and can dish out for massive studies.

Anything that’s worth striving for (and dedicating your life to) is not about numbers. The most important things you can’t measure. That’s a good thing, because your competitors suck at those unmeasurable things.

Build your business around genuine and human contact, a sense of identity and of accomplishment.

There’s no Google Analytics for that, sorry.