The King of the Apes was Left Handed

This post is not related to the game of baseball, baseball strategy, or baseball research, although you can make these parallels if you want to.

My mother told me this story when I was a kid in Russia. Although my memory has changed the details, so please don't blame my mother for anything that follows.

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A long time ago in Africa, there was a great ape. He was recognized by the other apes as the greatest ape of them all, and he became known as the King of the Apes.

Unlike the apes before him, the King of the Apes ate his birds with his left hand. This was unusual, as apes had always eaten their birds with the right hand, for as long as any ape could remember.

As the King of the Apes grew old and eventually died, his legend grew. Ambitious apes sought to imitate the King of the Apes. They asked 'what made the King of the Apes so great?' Since none of the other apes ate their birds with the left hand, some of the ambitious apes seized on this characteristic, and sough to emulate it. Eating birds with the left hand was not natural to most of the apes. But neither it was it terribly difficult to learn. Soon, all of the ambitious apes were eating their birds with the left hand.

Some of the ambitious apes had their own achievements. Soon enough, eating birds with the left hand became ubiquitous among the apes in Africa.

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I was recently visiting San Francisco, and staying with a college buddy of mine. One of his room mates quit his job to work on a startup.

As a departure from working on his idea, he would attend "Startup School" in Berkeley. Sometimes the other room mates would join him. This 'school' is a speaker series, where successful web-based entrepreneurs share their experiences & give tips to the future go-getters of the internet business world.

I remember one of the room mates talking about a lecture he attended. The speaker was the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh. Zappos is an internet retailer known both for its excellent customer service, and also for the strong culture within its workplace.

My friend's room mate was impressed by the speaker. Apparently his speech was focused on Zappos's company culture, and how that culture had made Zappos into a great company. One of his points was that a small company has to be willing to let go of their best engineer early on, if the engineer does not acquiesce to the demands of the culture that the founder wants to instill upon his young company. This bold & original idea stuck in the mind of my friend's room mate.

But is that really such good advice for a startup? Did the Beatles succeed because John Lennon & George Harrison made Paul McCarthey acquiesce to the culture of The Quarrymen? Or did they find a way to get along with Sir Paul, and in the process, made the band take on some of his characteristics as well?

Moreover, why should we care so much when people that we admire say something that goes against conventional wisdom? Is it because we think that what they are saying makes sense and represents progress? Or is it because we want to 'Be Like Mike,' rather than to think for ourselves?