Some more thoughts on NZ
I had some interesting feedback on my last post.
Seems that a few people thought it was about rugby.
It wasn’t. It was about the downside of living in this amazingly beautiful country full of incredible people.
BUT:
Kiwi’s are hopelessly pessimistic.
In summary, this is what I said:
The greatest baseball player of all time, Babe Ruth, also held the record for the greatest number of strike outs of all time. But if the scores were tied and it was the bottom of the 9th inning, who would you want coming in to bat? Someone who had never failed? Or the man who held the record for the most strike outs of all time – Babe Ruth?
I think most Kiwi’s faced with that choice without the benefit of knowing who Babe Ruth was, would chose the first guy, the guy who never made a mistake, the guy whos never been in this situation before?
And that’s where the problem lies.
Perspective.
Americans and those living in Silicon Valley would focus on the number of home runs, that’s their success metric.
New Zealanders focus on the number of strike outs whilst at bat.
Here’s what Om Malik says about Silicon Valley:
what really makes Silicon Valley special — to the point that it can’t be replicated anywhere else — is its relentless optimism. And that is the crucial difference between Silicon Valley and London and Bangalore and Shanghai.
What we need are more people like Rod Drury, who say Bugger it, I’m just going to go and make it happen despite all the crap he gets from anonymous small minded losers commenting on the NBR forums.