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yourself the head of Cisco or Apple Computer during their heydays, and suddenly it looks like you're brilliant and kind. You're treating your employees well and making money, so it must be that you can do both! But that's an illusion that disappears with a market downturn. There are times when it looks like managers aren't evil. You find level. I thought, "What if we built a food that works on every level, except for maybe formal state dinners?" So we worked for two years, and we came up with the Dilberito, forming a company around it. It comes down to the fact that I think the things you do are the things you can't prevent yourself from doing. Sometimes a thing seems like a good idea, but you just don't get up and do it because you don't care. There are some things that you just can't prevent yourself from doing. For me, this was one of them. What would be your best advice to business schools operating today? Are there lessons to be learned so that people can operate as effectively and honorably as possible? I think that everything that causes pain and frustration in business is caused by the same problem, which is expecting bad people to change. So many managers think, "Well, he screwed me 25 times in a row, but this 26th time, I'm feeling lucky!" I've noticed when something works, it's because, by sheer coincidence, a group got together that didn't have an idiot among them to stop everything, or it's because the group had one and got rid of him. So, that kind of social engineering is really important to learn. For example, if you look at Steve Jobs' success, I'd bet you'd find out that when he puts together his groups, he viciously gets rid of the bad people. Once you've done that, you have a tremendous ability to do things wrong, but still make things come out okay. How would you like to see the business world change? Really, the current "employer-employee" model is the prob- lem. It invariably forces some people to be unhappy. The only things that seem to make anything better are related to employee incentives and free agency. First, businesses that structure themselves so that employees have a percentage of the profits create more productive employees. That's the way I run my company. I have one employee who has an equity interest in the company, so I never have to wonder whether he's doing things right, because if he's capable (and he is), he's obviously going to be doing things that are good for both of us. Second, free agency, the so-called "free agent nation," Is there any one manager that you can point to and say, "He or she does it right"? I could only say he or she "does it effectively." There are peo- ple who are generous and kind, who aren't effective, and then there are the Jack Welches, who are not generous and kind but are very effective. Or, it's also possible that someone like Jack Welch simply got lucky. There's a great book that I often recommend called Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It's very instructive. For instance, many people believe that some people are more gift- ed in business and some people are less gifted, when it really might all come down to luck. Pure statistics support the idea that with so many businesses operating at one time, some- body's going to be lucky 100 times in a row. So every time that person opens a new business and it succeeds, it looks like he's the only one who can consistently do things right. Here's an example: My favorite strip is probably the one where Wally, one of the engineers, is getting his performance review. He explains to the boss that, in the past year, all of his co-workers have embarked on big projects, and they've all failed and cost the company millions of dollars. On the other hand, Wally has done absolutely nothing, and so, based on economics, he's been the most profitable employee for the company. He takes a sip of his coffee and says to the boss, "Watch and learn." That kind of luck is such an overwhelming factor in man- agement. It's kind of like asking, "Who is better at picking lottery numbers than anyone else?" Well, you might say the people who've won! But that would be kind of absurd. Likewise, is Jack Welch a genius, or is he just lucky? Now, it's possible that both are true, but I wouldn't bet on it. gives people choices. People are happy when they have choic- es, and everyone is going to make a different choice. In any office, not everyone is unhappy, only about half. If that half could work somewhere else, so they wouldn't always have to be in the office, they would enjoy their work much more. A free agent nation gives people options. I think those will be the innovations that make a difference. Doesn't that send a disheartening message to entre- preneurs and business students who believe that hard work and talent can lead to success? No, I don't think it does. That's the beauty of the capitalist system. Most people think life and business are like Las Vegas, that if you go there and keep gambling, you'll simply leave with no money. But that's not true. Life and business actually work the other way, because they involve your time and hopes. The capitalist system allows nine failures for every winner, so you're either one of the people who will fail a few times and quit, or you're one of the few people who will keep trying and win. If all the people who quit had kept going, they would have been as successful as I have been with "Dilbert." But they didn't. If I could pick one thing that contributed to my suc- cess, it was that I tried many things and I didn't quit. ■ z BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 21