On Thursday, May 1st, I attended a presentation by Kai-Fu Lee of Google China on the Wisdom of Choice. Lee is probably best known for his legal battle with his former employer, Microsoft, but what should be better known is that he’s brilliant. Palpably brilliant. There are few people that can speak as thoughtfully as Lee on a similarly wide range of topics.

In front of a crowd of roughly 200 Columbia MBA and MBA alumni, the PhD computer scientist largely avoided his technical area of expertise and spoke instead about how to make choices using the Confucian philosophy rooted in the middle way. His decision to teach a room full of New York, capitalist, Western listeners using Eastern philosophy was both an extremely interesting choice and one I greatly respected.

I’ve largely recreated the main themes of his presentation below. Most of this is direct from Lee’s slides with the middle way tenets condensed for easier consumption. But before that, why are we even talking about choices?

“The most important event [in recent history] is not technology or the Internet. It is.. for the first time.. substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they have to manage themselves.” – Peter Drucker

This was the only time that Lee really touched on anything technical at all, but it underlined the connection to his work and association with Google. The internet isn’t the only thing enabling choices, but as the leading way in which we increasingly get all of our information, it’s certainly the foundation for a lot of our choices. It enables us to make more choices and better informed choices.

Since we have to make all of these new choices, the middle way provides a framework for making the right choices, both on the internet and off:

1. The middle way is about avoiding extremities. Anything extreme is bad. Everything in moderation.
2. The middle way is about having flexibility to choose based on your situation. The best leaders choose their type of leadership depending on situation: directive: visionary, harmonious, democratic, accountable, coaching.
3. Have the pragmatism to pick your battles. Accept that there are some things you can’t change, but increase your level of influence for the things you can.
4. Have the objectivity to analyze your options. (And I love this…) What’s the worst that could happen? Can I accept that?
5. Have the self awareness to set expectations. Having the right expectations ensures you wont give up on failure and wont be complacent with any access.
6. Have the perspective to learn from mistakes. Wisdom is the ability to make good decisions, but you need to experience making bad decisions to get there.
7. Have the courage to let go. The best opportunities are transient.
8. Have the courage to follow your heart. If you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

Lee’s presentation style was methodical (something we can relate to at Enter Venture) with a deliberate structure that was obviously the result of years of presentation practice. He was calm at the podium and mixed his points with a variety of examples. It was obvious that he wasn’t always a good presenter but had chosen to become one.

One of his example stories described how bad he used to be in his graduate school years. Kai-Fu Lee received failing grades for his eye contact, communication, and engagement with a group of gifted summer school students. Apparently, Kai-Fu Lee practices what he preaches (see #6 above) because he was nothing but confident for his roughly 2 hour speech.

His story for #8 was particularly helpful for making big decisions, I think. He said there was a newspaper test and a tombstone test. The newspaper test forces you to evaluate your decision as if it were plastered on the front page of a newspaper. Would you want people to view that as your life? And the tombstone test for when you die, what do you want people to know you loved doing?

Other notable quotes from the presentation that were not necessarily his own were:

• A man who can think but cannot express himself is at the same level as a man who cannot think.
• It’s not innovation that matters. It’s useful innovation that matters.
• If you think your likelihood of success is in the 40-70% range, you should do it. Waiting longer could cost you more. – Colin Powell. (Yikes – the one strike. Colin Powell probably isn’t the best person for a likelihood of success example.)

Every early entrepreneur would be well served to follow Kai-Fu Lee’s advice but early entrepreneurs should especially learn something from the middle way. Early entrepreneurs have to decide whether they want to be entrepreneurs at all. Entrepreneurs, developers, and designers face an onslaught of choices both large and small. Not all of these decisions require that sort of Tombstone Test but channeling some Kai-Fu Lee wisdom will be a good idea for when you do.

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