Craig McCaw Interview (page: 5 / 5) Pioneer of Telecommunications	Print Interview

Are there times when you feel your integrity is truly challenged?

Craig McCaw: Your integrity is always challenged in business. I have long believed you have to assess your options in a very military way. You have to decide what the possibilities are, and then you have to decide whether you're going to use them. The people around you will bring you options which are amoral, or questionable, or aggressive. For the benefit of the people around you, you have to know what the alternatives are, what the other person might do to you, and how to respond to it.

You have to know what evil to put on the other person, as it were, to prevent them from doing it. You have to have your guard up. You have to think almost as a chess player. If they do that, what will I do? What could they do to me, and how do I defend against it?

So you're constantly coming to grips with the morality of it, because you are looking at all the evil you could do and then deciding what you will do. Mostly, when you make it clear that you've got something bad you can do to other people; they behave, because they recognize that you are not namby-pamby. You're not akin to Jimmy Carter trying to deal with Iran, where our American sensibilities were incompatible with their sensibilities, and they view you as weak if you haven't thought out the consequences. You have to demonstrate strength in order to be good.

What advice would you give a kid who had the motivation to pursue telecommunications, but not a clue as to how to go about it?

Craig McCaw: I'm not sure I would advise someone to actually take a career, in particular. I think they need to be driven from within and they'll know when they see it that it's the right thing to do.

I believe people are driven by some adversity to want to do greater things. If life is too easy, you take the easy part of it. You have to be driven by competitiveness, which is usually driven by adversity. You've been put down as a child; there was something you had to overcome. In almost every person you see who's really interesting; they have had the gift of adversity. Something bad happened to them which caused them to want to do more.

Once they got good at overcoming it, it's kind of like getting a ball rolling down hill. Pretty soon it's real easy and you just keep on doing it.

The power of ideas is the most important element to me today. Ideas, carefully nurtured, whatever they are, are what's of value today. We see that the world does not value mechanical things as much as the product of ideas. And that's creative thought, whatever it is. Software, meaning singing, dancing, playing baseball, basketball, doing something which is the human contribution.

Machines do mechanical things better than we can ever hope to and nobody cares. It's really the things that improve life and make something better that are important. Once someone finds something like that, that happens to attract them, the rewards will come.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I'm very dyslexic, so that forced me to be quite conceptual, because I'm not very good at details. And because I'm not good at details, I tend to be rather spatial in my thinking, oriented to things in general terms, rather than the specific. That allows you to step back and say, "What's the easy way? How do I get through this easily?" It also makes you very intuitive. You tend to look at things, and you don't want to read so much; reading is harder for a dyslexic. So you become very quick, very intuitive in understanding what the point is. And that's good with ideas. And so, I feel blessed about that.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

I think that people should be guided by their hearts, not by their minds. I If you're guided too much by your mind, you're not in touch with what you're really good at. Sometimes, in the world, we find an idiot savant, who is great at some one thing. I just have to focus on what I'm good at and not worry if other people don't like it that I'm not good at something they treasure, like details.

How do you achieve your own balance?

Craig McCaw: For me, balance is time; time doing something other than directly working on projects. That is not to say I won't take the opportunity to think about something. But your best ideas always come when you're not focused on work at that exact instant.

I believe in using the time I win with technology for things that I want to do. I love to fly airplanes and that's a great pursuit. If I have to go somewhere, I might as well fly myself, or participate in that process. I love mechanical things in general, boats or the like. Above all, I believe you should take solace in yourself and time on your own, time doing the things you choose to do, because you've figured out how to do it using technology.

If you use technology simply to put in more hours, then you're cheating yourself and I think you're cheating your contribution. As you're getting started you have to do that, and you work as long as you can, as hard as you can. But over time, if that's the balance, then the price was too high. If you didn't get the time for family and friends and the things you love to do, then you shouldn't have made that trade-off. Then it would have been a lot more fun to live in abject poverty in Guatemala or in Kazakhstan, rather than participate in the material world, which is shallow.

There is no happiness from material things. They can help you do things, or make more of your time, but they don't have substance. That's one thing I'm sure of.

Is there an American Dream today?

Craig McCaw: To me, the meaning of the American Dream is what happens if you give people freedom and accountability. Anything is possible if you allow people the rope with which to do things, either hang themselves, or climb higher.

If we as a country have a fault, it is that we are too free. If we have a benefit, it is that we are too free. It's a difficult balance. The line between chaos and greatness is very fine. The story of Lord of the Flies applies here. We are capable of extraordinary evil, if there are no limits whatsoever.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The American Dream is all about what people will do if you allow them the open opportunity. And that's why an extraordinary number of people come from other countries and achieve greatness here. It's because they have the desire, the toughness, the willingness to work, and the education, and then they do something with it, and it is extraordinary to see. Other countries are beginning to determine the fact that they can't succeed against us if they don't provide more freedom. And that's why we see a growing global revolution in decontrolling telecommunications. Because without that, their societies can't compete with ours. Because ideas, and the nurturing of those ideas is what is making America great.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

Do you think kids today see the promise the world of telecommunications holds for them, and their own futures?

Craig McCaw: I think kids recognize intuitively the power of the computer, and what the free flow of information can mean. But our society guides us to think that we have to find our place in the world very quickly, and I always sense a certain amount of desperation to find that place. My only guidance is you'll find it in your heart.

You don't think people need to have one particular skill to get into that world?

Craig McCaw: Opportunity today isn't related to how well you do something mechanical. It's ideas, and nurturing those ideas, that builds value. Technology has opened us to valuing those things above all else. That can be artistic, it can be anything. The free flow of information makes possible opportunities we never dreamed of. Those who recognize that, and who are open to it, will join this great rush of opportunity in building a whole new world around the free flow of information. The idea of browsers for the Internet, to make it easy to find information, has been critical to the process. Of course, an extraordinary opportunity came to Netscape, for being the first one to do it well. When you see that gap between what is and what should be, that's an opportunity. "Why is there that gap? It doesn't seem right." And then the question is, "How do we close the gap?" Then, figure out if it's worth the cost of doing it today. It may be doable in two years. In two years you may be doing other things, but if you're open to it, you'll come back to it, when there's a possibility.

Is there a course of study you could recommend to students who are interested in your field?

Craig McCaw: I have a degree in history. I never thought it was important to study a particular business. I think you have to study life and understand that to be open to opportunity. So I have no particular recommendation, except that you understand the past, because if you understand the past, you understand the future. Change occurs because there is a gap between what is and what should be. The change can be catastrophic, or the opportunities can be extraordinary, because you've seen a gap.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think people who understand both science and philosophy, anthropology, whatever, really are going to be benefited the most. And I've always been rather negative about studying the specific aspects of business in school. I always have felt that business schools, which are too disciplined, create wonderful bureaucrats. And bureaucrats are important, but if you really want to make a contribution I think you need to be open to the possibilities.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

Artistically speaking, in understanding life, you understand business.

Thank you very much. It's been fascinating.

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