Harry Truman attended a business college and later law school, but he did not earn a degree. He is the most recent American president without a college degree, and the only one since William McKinley.
Skills, Not Degrees
On March 15, 2022, Maryland governor Larry Hogan announced that thousands of state jobs would no longer require a four-year degree. “People shouldn’t be compensated based on their years of education, but what their skills are to do the job,” he said.
The federal government had moved toward skills-based hiring earlier. Executive Order 13932, signed on June 26, 2020, said that “an overreliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates.” It told agencies to assess candidates “in a manner that does not rely solely on educational attainment.”
The First Pick
The Oakland Raiders chose the quarterback JaMarcus Russell with the first pick of the 2007 NFL Draft. His six-year contract was worth up to $68 million, with $31.5 million guaranteed.
In May 2010 the Raiders released him. He is often described as one of the biggest busts in NFL history.
Theranos
Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos at 19. She promised to revolutionize blood testing, detecting hundreds of diseases with blood from a simple finger prick. Her board included the former secretaries Henry Kissinger and James Mattis. She raised billions of dollars, and the company was at one point valued at more than $9 billion.
According to NBC News, the technology did not appear to work as claimed. In January 2022 a jury found Holmes guilty on four counts of fraud and conspiracy involving investors. She was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months.
Show Me
Missouri is called the Show-Me State. The Missouri Secretary of State traces the slogan to Congressman Willard Vandiver at a naval banquet in Philadelphia. “…frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”
Vandiver did not invent the phrase. It was in print by 1893, when the Omaha Daily Bee printed a letter from a man who wrote, “I am from Missouri and they must show me something.” The state gives the banquet as 1899. One researcher, Barry Popik, dates it to 1900, and the slogan has never been made official.
The First 90 Days
Michael Watkins’s The First 90 Days was published by Harvard Business School Press in 2003 as a guide for managers starting a new job. It advises them to pursue small-scale “early wins” to build credibility.
The 199th Pick
The New England Patriots drafted Tom Brady with the 199th pick in 2000, in the sixth round. Their starter was Drew Bledsoe, who had signed a 10-year, $103 million contract. On September 23, 2001, a hit from the Jets linebacker Mo Lewis sheared an artery, and Brady got his chance.
In November, with Bledsoe back, Bill Belichick announced that Brady would remain the starter. Bledsoe said he had been told he would get a chance to win back his job. Brady finished that season as the Super Bowl MVP.
“Self-Made Man”
Americans apply a two-word adjective to their business heroes. He is self-made. The phrase was strong enough to survive being used by a man born into slavery.
Frederick Douglass delivered a lecture called “Self-Made Men” beginning in 1859. His definition was severe. Self-made men “owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings.”
Douglass gave one explanation for success. Self-made men, he said, are “men of work.”
The Dropout Founder
Bill Gates left Harvard. Steve Jobs left Reed College. Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard. In American business culture these are not scandals. They are origin stories.
The culture formalized the choice. In 2011 Peter Thiel’s fellowship began paying young people to skip college and build companies. The first class had 24 fellows. Each received 100,000 dollars.
The vocabulary of results
Results-oriented. A standard phrase on an American résumé. The claim is not that the person works hard or knows the field, but that they can be judged by what came out.
Deliverables. American project language names the output as the unit of work. Not tasks, not effort, not hours. The thing handed over.
Track record. Not qualifications, not references, not what someone believes about themselves. What has already been produced, and can be pointed at.
Best practice. Methods are adopted from a competitor, another industry, another country, on the grounds that they work. There is no loyalty in the concept — the practice earns its place by outcome and loses it the same way.
Return on investment. Every expenditure becomes a candidate for the calculation, including training, meetings, research and attention. The question is not whether the thing is good. It is what came back.