🤔 Sometimes being ambitious is not good (?)

🤔 Sometimes being ambitious is not good (?)

Is it a good thing to be ambitious?

My friends living in LA told me everyone there was so used to having Brad Pitt or other Giga movie stars sitting next to them at a Starbucks that they wouldn’t even bother to care. Nobody will shake a bit in front of these movie stars. Everyone in Hollywood is ambitious enough to want to be the next Robert Downey Jr., so their noses are pointing to the sky.

Like the mentioned top university students, they aspire to be the next Jeff Bezos or famous dropouts who change the world. So, each other is giving each other the least frank possible. Oh, you are developing a cancer drug? Cool. Me too. And I think mine is a better one. Tell me more so I can dismantle yours and absorb your talents to my advantage. I remember one time I was taking notes of a postdoc’s presentation at a very top school and was warned not to take notes because it would make the speaker uncomfortable. 😮

Another problem with having way too many emerging leaders in a limited size of the school population is the rise of another problem - running out of believers and followers. If you are a leader of an organization, you better not be the only one in the org. You need people who believe in the vision, and you need them to be a bit less ambitious than you so their end goal is not to dismantle your org for the birth of their org.

Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you.

Basically, my point is that a homogenous population mix, even if it is full of ambitious leaders, is not ideal for human progress. If everyone wants to go to the spotlight and take the mic, who should shut up and do the nitty gritty thing?