Success doesn’t always look like what we think it looks like.

On a personal side, I found Bo Burlingham's Small Giants to be a great window into how business can be an extension of social change and the critical role the entrepreneur plays in creating progress in society.

As you climb of the organizational ladder, you have to redefine your role in the value chain from player to captain to coach to manager, and for some, to owner. These are different roles and you won't be able to succeed as a manager when you're acting like a player.

In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, my grandfather got me a job at a local messenger company working on Wall Street. I was lucky enough to have been in the business during a stock market boom but just before the fax machine appeared on the scene, let alone email and the Internet. As a result, the messenger business was booming.

I found that I loved producing that kind of propaganda and I loved the power that a few students with a Macintosh computer could wield. I was hooked on communications at that point.

The problem is not the sentiment, it's the execution. When a company makes a mistake, the individual benefits because they've learned how NOT to do something while the institution had to pay for the mistake.

In companies, there are three activities that should be labeled better. First there is the "CORE" which is the thing the company does that its customers pay it to do.