A couple of years ago, I sat with a good friend in a larger but good company. While enjoying some partly enjoyable catering (yes, it is possible to enjoy something that is not enjoyable!), he uttered:

“Andrej, you are too wise to be successful in business.”

He later tried to soften the statement since he noticed that I did not appreciate what he meant, but the worm was already there. 

His message rests on three premises:

1. One needs some skills to do business.
2. Wise individuals often lack the necessary skills for business.
3. Only those who are clever do (successful) business.

Are commercial books wise or clever?

The worm*, which had been planted somewhere in my subconscious, sprang to noticeable dimensions when I received the first shipment of hard copies of Brandlife. That worm came as a surprise, since so far, I had assumed that at least for books, both skill and wisdom should combine to produce a result. However, according to my friend’s assumption, at least commercial books are clever, not smart, since they are commercial because they are in good business. Only books that are smart sell, while those that are wise at the same time do not. 

Based on such a conclusion, one could refute my friend’s statement. And rationally, I knew then, and I know now, that his statement must have been wrong. There are certainly wise examples among all successful businessmen, and wise books among all commercially successful books.

What are consultants hired for?

But on the other hand, my friend claimed that wisdom is a kind of deal-breaker. Numerous personal experiences support this claim. No one has ever hired me as a consultant for being wise, but for being a suitable and accessible solution to their demand at that very moment. Clients recognized my real added value for them, as something by the way, and often even against their will and at their expense. They did not (do not) object afterwards, but most often, I guess, they are puzzled for not understanding why something that I did for them worked.

And why then was it the shipment of Brandlife that evoked such depressing thoughts like Magdalen cookies in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time? I deliberately wrote a branding handbook that defies all the rules of contemporary “how-to” books. I wanted to be wise, even though I was expected to be clever.

Clever repeats what the wise originated

However, Haruki Murakami’s statement, which I used as the featured image of this post, came across. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” This statement can be rephrased in a familiar one within the business community: “If you only produce goods that everyone else is producing (a commodity), you can only expect a bargain in return.”

I might not sell myself as well as a consultant or a writer for following Murakami’s values as much as Murakami** might never win the Nobel Prize. Still, I know that I cannot— and want not —to sell solutions that everyone else is providing. Call this stupid. I take this as wise.

 

*This is one of many posts that try to contextualize concepts that have frozen in time (with time). We think we understand them, while in reality, we only repeat words with no meaning. 

**This post was written in 2016. Unfortunately, I was right about Haruki Murakami.