Seeing is Believing

“Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.”  

Leonardo Da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life

I asked a young acquisitions associate to go look at a property I was thinking about buying so that he could assess it and tell me what he thinks it’s worth.  He came back an hour later with an answer.  I knew that he hadn’t seen the property in person because it was an hour’s drive away.  He did some online research and tried to impress me with a quick answer.  I wasn’t impressed.  

As much as I am an advocate of technology and am proud to be an early adopter, I feel it is critical to physically see each and every property - and its environs of course - that I consider purchasing. The numbers and secondhand observations that this associate found online were not enough for me to move forward.  He could have come back to me a few hours later with a much more convincing answer.  I don’t think it’s worth making a multi-million dollar mistake to save a few hours.

So I went to see the property myself with a doctor friend in tow (on the way home from our daughters’ synchronized ice skating competition in CT), and she told me that she has the same problem with residents.  They stay glued to their computers and don’t spend enough time with the patients.  The test results are critical, but so are conversations with and physical examination of the patients.    

I saw a few good films on this subject recently: The Trouble with the Curve and The Internship - two very different movies and both worth seeing.  One is a drama with the great Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams, the other a goofball comedy with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.  Both end up with the same profound message that success comes when you connect with people, not just numbers.  I recommend both of these movies.  Vince Vaughn’s repeated motivational references to Flashdance are laugh-out-loud hilarious, and he and Owen Wilson effectively teach the 21 year old tech prodigies interning at Google how to succeed by connecting personally with each other and with their potential customers.  Clint Eastwood sticks to his guns in assessing the talent of a hotshot rookie who has nuanced flaws that the spreadsheets could never reveal.

What or who are you going to connect with today?