Monsieur Keita, Physics, and Intuition

The world and office have been abuzz today. Between the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday morning and Chase’s (as in Chase Cutler, Baylor MBA 2013) truck having been broken into 2 nights ago a lot has been happening. Don’t worry, they took nothing of value – at least he’s pretty sure. I say “broken into.” That might not be a great definition considering the fact he left it unlocked. Just the same we were all heart-broken for him.

This morning I spent a good amount of time working with a guy from technical marketing named Pete. Optical lenses for eye glasses, if you don’t know, are, apparently, extremely complicated. I’ve been completely mesmerized by the science behind it all. I felt like a kid at Disney World during our lab tour where we watched how they manufacture all of the lenses. Learning how the system works has been half the fun of the summer. A little bit later I’ve got a meeting with Gabriel Keita, a PhD in mathematics and the technical marketing whiz here at Essilor. The mission? Figure out how to explain one of the biggest revolutions in the progressive lens market since the 90’s when Essilor’s signature product, Varilux Comfort, was launched.

All of this going on, my mind has really been occupied with realizing, simple though it is, that every company comes with its hang ups and inefficiencies. My very visceral response would be to say, “Forget it! I can’t deal with this kind of stuff” but that response is fleeting and is quickly replaced by something a little more tenacious and a lot more exciting, “This place is FULL of opportunity.” Naivety would lead me and many others, I’m sure, to embark on a quest for the perfect company void of any characteristics or tendencies that give us pause. Zeal and commitment, however, bid us on a very different kind of quest. They beckon us to put the skills we’ve learned at Baylor to use and require us to know well the experiences we’ve had up to that point in such a way that they grant wisdom and insight into problems, small and large. They demand we hold in tension the necessity of knowledge and the potency of intuition.

Later I will speak to Monsieur Keita. Here knowledge will be expanded and intuition sparked. We’ll talk about messaging and the physics of optics all at the same time. We’ll discuss the scientist and the end customer, innovations stumbled upon by dumb luck and strategy developed over the course of weeks and months. Either way, this place is FULL of opportunity and I intend to seize upon every bit of it I can.