Greta Thunberg is not your little girl

I’m a bit dazzled by the number of anti-Greta comments, especially since she was given the title Time’s “Person of the Year”.

The criticisms range from:

• she didn’t deserve this having only worked in the field for a short time
• she’s being controlled and/or abused by external forces
• she’s only doing what many of us feel, however, she is getting the credit unfairly
• her science is wrong.

Each of these points are so intriguing to me that I wanted to spend some time responding to them.

A) Times person of the year is not about age nor about how much time someone spends in an area. Its about effectiveness. It’s about how much impact you’ve made. How many people have you shifted into action and inspired? In fact the most effective person is the person who shifts the most people in both quantity and quality of action in the shortest amount of time. Greta’s strikes sparked a global movement that moved 6–7 million people into action. That’s far more than most people will do in their lifetime.

B) Some people know what their purpose is very early in life. While many of us are going to watch movies (as the most recent suggestion), playing video games and hanging out with friends, others are writing letters to their local political leaders, volunteering at their local church or animal rescue centre. Not because we were made to, but something inside us tells us we have to. This is how Bethoven, Mozart and yes even Greta behaved. They found their purpose early!

To justify their actions as someone else’s control or abuse is belittling to their purpose. They found partners along the way that aided their mission — a mission that they themselves were called into actioning.

C) Movements are never created in a vacuum. Ofcourse, she’s saying what many people already feel, that is why she has a following. The difference is her unique angle and this unique time in history. It takes audacity to bunk classes en-masse and spark a movement. It’s also a time in history where the world is hungry for fresh voices. Hers is strong, clear and unique. Hero’s are not made in a vacuum. Their impact is reliant on a combination of their unique voice coalescing with the zeitgeist of the time. My favorite hero of all time, Gandhi, had this. Yes he was a person of enormous resolve but he also lived in a time where the British were running low on resources and interest in holding onto hostile colonies. It’s also how new eras in art start, when an artist takes a new form factor and gives voice to the culture of the time. Would Andy Warhol have been Andy Warhol had we not had the invention of silk screening and a cultural shift to mass production! Yes, hero’s are both nature and nurture.

D) There is much science published already including the most recent UN Climate Change Report written by scientists representing 195 member countries around the world. If you don’t believe the science, atleast acknowledge that getting so many scientists who tend to be natural skeptics to all believe coherently in one argument is a hard thing to do.

I grew up being told that youth are the future. Numerous educational and civic programs like youth council encourage young people to take part, learn and share their voices. Yet, when their voice is shared, they are criticized for it. Told to be silent. Stripped of their power.

Is this what you want your daughter or son to learn? That you’ll be marginalized not because of the content of your ideas but because of the number of days you’ve been around the sun. Age is just that: number of years you’ve orbited the sun. And that is not a prerequisite to wiseness.

Greta is not your past. She may not act how you acted when you were young. She is not your little girl.

If you are currently interviewing for Product Management or considering switching my No Fluff Guide to Product Management Interview — Insights from Direct Experience email series has been known to be very helpful.

I’m a Product Manager at Google. I am also a Physician and have been a two time tech founder and a non-profit anti-poverty founder. Because I’ve switched fields so often, I’ve learnt to learn much faster and more in depth than most people. I wholly believe if you improve yourself by 1% every day, you get to be 37x better by the end of the year. And if you do that repeatedly for a few years, you get to be in your own league.

I love to build people, products and organizations. Sign up here on how to learn fast, synthesize information so that you get new insights and win only where you can win — being your most authentic self.