Short read: LinkedIn is where everyone succeeds and nobody ever fails

Have you noticed how everyone on social media seems to be having exotic holidays that you somehow never manage yourself? Or that your spouse has never declared their love, or surprised you with a gift, quite the way the lucky ones on Instagram are by theirs? LinkedIn has become the corporate edition of the same fiction — the place we go to perform not our happiness but our success. We were delighted, then, to find the sharpest takedown of it written not by a management guru but by a comedian. Papa CJ has, by his own account, spent twenty years bombing on stage, and he has clearly been paying close attention to the rest of us.

His diagnosis is that “LinkedIn exists in an alternate universe where everyone has ‘been humbled’, ‘been honoured’, ‘been thrilled’, ‘been deeply grateful’…” — a place where “No one has ever been ‘mildly confused,’ ‘spectacularly ignored,’ or ‘asked to leave.’ … every keynote receives a standing ovation, and every founder changes the world. In fact, here, every intern ‘drives strategic transformation.’ If aliens landed tomorrow and studied LinkedIn, they’d conclude Earth has already solved poverty, climate change, and PowerPoint.”

What makes him the right man to notice this is that his own trade offers no such refuge. “Standup comedy doesn’t give you that option. If a joke fails, you know immediately. So does everyone else. Nobody schedules a meeting afterwards to discuss whether the audience was sufficiently aligned with the strategic intent of the punchline. They just stare at you. Or their phone. Or, if you’re particularly bad, their watch.” Comedy, he writes, “teaches you that failure is information” — bomb, and you change a word, move a pause, or “eventually accept that the brilliant idea you’ve been polishing for three weeks was not ahead of its time. It was just rubbish.”

Business claims to believe the same thing — fail fast, take risks, learn from your mistakes — and then quietly edits every story before posting it. Nobody, he points out, writes “‘Delighted to announce that after 18 months of strategic transformation, we have returned to exactly where we started, but with a new logo.'” Nobody posts “‘Humbled to share that the market did not recognise my genius'”, or admits that “‘the project I championed has been cancelled. Apparently, finance had concerns. In retrospect, finance had several excellent points.'” And “Nobody says: ‘Thrilled to announce that the promotion went to Sanjay.’ Except of course, Sanjay.”

The result is a world of suspiciously smooth CVs. “Nobody gets fired. They ’embark on a new chapter.’ Nobody’s company fails. They ‘take invaluable learnings into their next venture.’ Nobody makes a terrible decision. They ‘gain clarity.’ At this rate, bankruptcy will soon be called ‘an exciting opportunity to explore alternative liquidity models.'”

For those of us who spend our days trying to tell durable franchises from lucky ones, this is where the joke turns serious — and Papa CJ lands it cleanly: “If leaders only narrate victories, everyone else starts believing competent people don’t fail. And once failure becomes evidence of incompetence rather than a normal consequence of trying difficult things, people become extremely good at hiding it.” Which, he notes, is a pity, “because organisations generally learn more from ‘This didn’t work’ than ‘Delighted to share…'” The managements we most want to back are precisely the ones candid enough to tell us which of their bets didn’t work, and why.

He isn’t asking for a festival of inadequacy. He simply wonders what might happen if, just occasionally, someone posted: “‘Today I gave a presentation. It was average. Nobody cried. Nobody called me visionary. One person asked where the samosas were. Overall, a decent Tuesday.'”

His verdict on such a post, and ours on his article: “I’d hit ‘Like’. Twice.”

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Note: The above material is neither investment research, nor financial advice. Marcellus does not seek payment for or business from this publication in any shape or form. The information provided is intended for educational purposes only. Marcellus Investment Managers is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and is also an FME (Non-Retail) with the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) as a provider of Portfolio Management Services. Additionally, Marcellus is also registered with US Securities and Exchange Commission (“US SEC”) as an Investment Advisor.