Amy Chua has certainly stirred the pot with her new memoir, “Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother” as excerpted by the Wall Street Journal last week. For those who have not heard about the book, basically it is Ms. Chua’s description of what it means to be a Chinese mother. To Ms. Chua, a Chinese mother demands perfection – at school, on the piano, whatever a child undertakes. There is no room for playdates, sleepovers, parts in the school play. Unwillingness to achieve perfection might result in burned toys. Failure demands immediate work to correct the failure. Ms. Chua cites the time when one of her girls came second in a math competition and she made her daughter go home and do 2,000 math problems so it would not happen again.
As a parent, I have no comment on what works (or does not) with any parenting style. Ms. Chua’s girls seem well adjusted and, the oldest one at least, is proud to be her mother’s daughter. My only endeavor here is to compare Ms. Chua’s philosophy as a Chinese mother to running a creative business.
It is still up for debate whether we now have computers that are faster than the human brain. What is not up for debate, if you believe Moore’s Law (and it is kind of hard not to), is that the computer will be faster in the very near future, maybe even smarter. So if we are about not making mistakes and learning to be perfect, we are going to lose to the computer. Every time. And yet we will still try to win – at least children of Chinese mothers will. To which I say, there is value in never being willing to fail, to admit you cannot do something, or, more to the point, having someone (your mother) refuse to believe you cannot do something despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Within the margin then, being the Chinese mother of your creative business can work. If you fail, find the flaws and fix them, no excuses and no exceptions. Despite everyone telling you to the contrary – your employees, colleagues, even your clients – believe that you are capable of doing what you say you can and then refuse to be wrong. However, when you reach your edge (and we all know what that is for each of us) you have to let go of being a Chinese mother.
If you are going to be successful, you are going to have to be willing to fail – often and spectacularly. The cure to the failure will not be to avoid repeating the failure. It will be to figure out the success within the failure and to do that instead, all the while knowing you might repeat the failure. Fixing the mistake will just create other mistakes, like the proverbial finger in a dyke. Better to ignore what is not working, let it keep not working and focus on what is. Instead of doing the same thing better than everyone else, you are going to have to do things differently from everyone else. And not just lip service to that difference, truly different – absolutely intrinsic to only you. You will have to embrace the idea that practice makes perfect is an oxymoron. Practice will have to make you, your art and your creative business more you.
Once you figure out the success in your failure, you can then go back to being the Chinese mother. Refuse to be anything other than the best. Until it is time to do something else. Then go be the best at that. The ethos of art, by definition, is (re)invention. The cycle for your creative business is not to be (re)inventing for its own sake. It is to be willing to (re)invent to find a new path and then take the path as far as it will go.
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Another great article, Sean. We’ve listened to recent interviews with Amy Chua and can certainly see how applying some of these {perhaps harsh} principals to creative business can result in otherwise unseen steps and can challenge business owners to be more innovative and brave in their daily practices. “Refuse to be anything other than the best” is a motto that everyone should have and tell themselves constantly. We try to live by this and it inspires and pushes us to do better, to work harder. As always, thank you for the wonderful read.
this is obviously not addressing the point/heart of your article, but your mention of robots reminded me of the cover story of wired last month on artificial intelligence (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_ai_essay_airevolution/)
Relevant quote: “This explosion is the ironic payoff of the seemingly fruitless decades-long quest to emulate human intelligence. That goal proved so elusive that some scientists lost heart and many others lost funding. People talked of an AI winter—a barren season in which no vision or project could take root or grow. But even as the traditional dream of AI was freezing over, a new one was being born: machines built to accomplish specific tasks in ways that people never could. At first, there were just a few green shoots pushing up through the frosty ground. But now we’re in full bloom. Welcome to AI summer.
Today’s AI bears little resemblance to its initial conception. The field’s trailblazers in the 1950s and ’60s believed success lay in mimicking the logic-based reasoning that human brains were thought to use. In 1957, the AI crowd confidently predicted that machines would soon be able to replicate all kinds of human mental achievements. But that turned out to be wildly unachievable, in part because we still don’t really understand how the brain works, much less how to re-create it.”
It’s important to fail because it shows what you did wrong. Without that, it means perfection (which is unattainable over a long period of time) so you might as well get used to falling down, just don’t get comfortable laying down there.
Another great article! As soon as we embraced “re-invention” our success-o-meter went sky high. Of course, we had a little help from a particular friend of ours . . .
Sometimes, as artists, we give ourselves permission to be rigid. Rigid is safe. It’s comfortable and familiar. Rigidity does not necessitate risk-taking. We now understand that rigidity is not always a precursor to perfection.
Great post Sean! I can actually see all the different angles as I was raised by an immigrant Chinese Mother and now am a Chinese Mother myself. My parents raised us to be passionate – they saw how their classmates were raised and vowed to be different. Straight A’s were appreciated but never expected – they wanted us to be happy, well adjusted children and as long as we tried our best, it was good enough for them. We were never expected to be doctors, lawyers, or accountants. Yes, we were expected to play two instruments – with one being the piano. They instilled in us the value of hard work and respect {Is Sophia really happy? Or is she jumping to her mother’s defense and “saving face” from the criticism she’s received?} As a parent, I find that I draw from both Chinese and Western influences.
I think that you are spot on in being a Chinese mother for running your creative business. To me, failure isn’t an option and I refuse to be anything but the best. Looking forward to your next post!
The words “be the Chinese mother of your creative business” will be dancing through my head!
great post, Sean!
your post on Vicente Wolf’s blog is excellent, absolutely powerful and inspiring. Thank you!
The only problem is that you can still implement new changes once your business is not profitable but parents who bring their children up in a tiger mother manner seriously threaten their natural development with no possibility to change it once they grow up.
Your second last paragraph really nailed it home. Thank you!