Total Rethink

Total Rethink, Why Entrepreneurs Should Act Like Revolutionaries, by David McCourt, Wiley, 2019

First, let me introduce you to David McCourt, a wild and crazy - crazy-smart, that is -  entrepreneur creator.  One day McCourt was lunching with his host, Jimmy Lee, a JP Morgan exec and deal maker, and a head hunter.  The head hunter had big plans - wanted to place McCourt as CEO at the helm of a Fortune 100 company.  "It was an attractive offer," McCourt recalls, "but just as I opened my mouth to speak Jimmy Lee interrupted."

"That's not for Dave," he said.  "What he does is create stuff where there was nothing before.  He's  bought this piece of land in Ireland, with buildings that look like Ground Zero, but he's transforming it, turning a piggery into a guesthouse and a chicken coop into a bathroom.  He's built his own private pub from one of the stables and the cowshed is now this amazing walled garden.  He took something that looked like a piece of shit and turned it into something beautiful."

The death watch

That said, fast forward to winter 2020, and we find McCourt locked into our new unearthly reality - repeated stock market crashes, the death of retail, the race for vaccines,and overnight death tolls in the thousands.  For sheer emotional power, even an Irishman can't beat the horror of it all. And yet, ever the entrepreneur, he stands up, takes off his facemask, and lays out what must happen next.  

Speaking on Bloomberg tv, the interview turns to leadership during a crisis.  In answer to the question of how a leader should go around getting people to come together and get past the difficulties we are currently dealing with, the founder of Granahan McCourt Capital, who as Chair of National Broadband of Ireland saw technology communications as key, still advocates an energetic, world-changing response.  "The first thing is to make your issues and the people you are leading's issues the same.  Spend as much time listening as talking - some business people do that really well, but unfortunately the government response is contributing to the problems we are seeing now.   Technology has changed how leaders get their message across, overnight we have all changed. Two big shifts must happen:

1. We must get connectivity to everyone, especially with the shift from rural to urban areas;  we need to make connectivity a human right. 

2. We have to rethink how we communicate with machines and vice versa."  

In answer to the question of how leaders should offer reassurance to people that they're not going to become obsolete, or earn much less than they earn now, McCourt answers "Well, maybe that's the wrong question. I don't think we can reassure people if we don't make the necessary changes.  The types of jobs we need in America are on an upward slope, so as leaders we can't give people a fake sense of confidence.  We need to get them ready for future jobs. And if you don't have a job now,  realize that 20% of today's jobs in the