All that has been done without a single day spent at any of the financial industry giants (e.g., Visa, MasterCard, Bank of America, etc). Nor he lived in Detroit or Germany (so that he can work for the likes of Ford Motors and BMW). Certainly he has no background at NASA or Russian space programs. In summary, he does not have the experience but he qualifies! So how does one solve this dichotomy?
The short answer is that people like Elon Musk have a special power. Don't get too excited you Nerds! I'm not talking about Tony Stark's magnetic chest plate that Elon Musk owns (boom... you get what I did there). Some people in strategic consulting industry call his power "problem-solving". Others call it "design thinking" based on empathy. Hell, some people in food industry call it "molecule gastronomy". What do all these seemingly random examples I am listing here have in common with Elon Musk? They all poses the power to follow a deconstruct-reconstruct process when dealing with complex problems. These people have the ability to simplify a complex matter to its bare minimum structure (deconstruct) and then design a better version based on a new set of logic and norms (reconstruct). Simply, they start asking the "why" question repeatedly to peel the onion layer by layer:
You get what I'm trying to say? Elon Musk and people like him have the power to ask the "why" question several times in order to deconstruct a problem to its bare minimum and then reconstruct a better version. Most people unknowingly learn this process through experience. That's what it means to be an experienced guru in a field. Drawing from many years of experience, one immediately knows the bare minimum skeleton behind an issue. He has seen it in the past and when facing the problem, his experience tells him where to look at and how to solve the problem. But there is another way! You don't need to have the experience to solve a complex problem in any field. People like Elon Musk just use their power and deliver again and again. While most people draw from their experience, Elon-type people draw from their deconstruct-reconstruct power. Owning or not owning the power of deconstruct-reconstruct process splits our workforce into two types of people: (type 1) those who draw from experience in their specific field of expertise, (type 2) those who draw from their special power and succeed at any field. Which one are you? If you are a type 2 person, you are most probably a better fit to become an entrepreneur. You naturally feel qualified for a wide range of roles and responsibilities but hit the wall of type 1 people and cannot pursue too many ventures in the corporate world. However, more importantly, if you are a type 1 person, I'd like to leave you with two takeaways:
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