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In The West Australian of 1 Jul 2010, Steven Martin writes a plea for better education for gifted children. Martin has been a teacher for more than 30 years. He specialises in teaching gifted children.
Unfortunately, Martin is a teacher. He deals with children as they are learning. This isolates him from the reality of business and adult careers.
To succeed in business, you need strong ideas. These ideas need not be "good" ideas, they just need to be seen as good. A further essential is, that you need to be able to strongly push your own ideas.
An intelligent person will often be able to see more than one side to an argument. The less intelligent will see only one side, their own. If you are able to see the benefit of other people's ideas, you may weaken, and allow other people's ideas to be go ahead.
If you allow other people's ideas to go ahead -- you lose. Your idea was never tested, so your idea gets no credit. You will not be a source of successful ideas. You will not be promoted. You fail.
If you are stupid, you will see only one idea -- your own. If you are really stupid -- and thick-skinned -- you will push your own idea and trample on any other ideas. After all, you "know" that your idea is good, so every other idea is "bad". What happens then?
Perhaps your idea works. You gain glory, credit and promotion. Perhaps your idea fails to work. You may be able to blame circumstances beyond your control. You may be able to change jobs before anything untoward hits the fan. If worst comes to worst, you rejoin the pack of mindless drones and wait for your next opportunity to push a mindless idea.
The ultimate source of success
Who is it that has the very best ideas? Your boss.An intelligent employee may listen to ideas and see alternatives. There may be weaknesses to be avoided or strengths to be further exploited. There may even be better alternatives.
If the idea came from your boss -- there is no such thing as "a better alternative".
If you question, you are not a team player. If you raise issues, you are being negative. If you suggest better alternatives, you are a trouble-maker.
Anything other than complete agreement with the thoughts of your superiors is a CLM... a career limiting move. As Sir Humphrey would say, "Very courageous, Minister."
If you are stupid -- or under-educated, or adept at concealing your intelligence -- you will agree whole-heartedly with every decision by your boss. You will never question, just obey. You will be seen as a team player, with a positive attitude. You will be an asset to your team. You will be promoted.
Business, success and education
So to get ahead in business, you need to agree with your boss. When you have a good idea, make sure that it agrees with your boss' ideas. Then push that idea as hard as possible... preferably, over the dead bodies of your competition for promotion.Were you a gifted child? Did you have a good education? Were your intellectual abilities identified and encouraged? You will fail.
You only hope is to be born into power and money. And to have a very thick skin and no awareness of the rights and feeling of others. That may help you to overcome the disadvantage of being able to think for yourself.
Did your education teach you to fit in? To act dumb? To act as though you were of average or below average intelligence? There may yet be hope for you.
Good luck.
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3 comments:
This is such a shallow argument. First, it assumes that all that matters is success in business. There is nothing wrong with success in business, but without an inner sense of self-worth, any other success is hollow. Some people are good at business, and if that's where their aptitude lies then good luck to them. They will get their self-worth (or some of it) from being good at that.
Second, it assumes that the best way to be successful in business is to suck up to your boss, no matter what. This is mainly an assertion, without much in the way of argument. It may sometimes be true, but you have universalised a particular.
Finally, without the diversity of intelligence displayed by all kinds of people (physicists, doctors, writers, artists, etc, etc), there would be far less business - nothing much worth selling beyond the basics. But the things we value most are the creative outputs of great minds in a wide range of domains. They are the problem solvers and the ones who make life pleasurable in so many ways. Some of them may be good at business too, and others not, but it doesn't matter. Those who aren't will find business people if they need them.
Steven Martin was addressing a need in our schools. Bright kids get frustrated and sometimes depressed if they are not stimulated. Some of them might have great business minds, but there is no outlet for them (see http://simonkidd.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/lets-raise-kids-to-be-entrepreneurs/). Others will have different aptitudes. Each needs to be extended according to his or her own interests and aptitudes.
Hello Simon,
Thank you for your comments!
Yes, mine was a deliberately shallow comment. (I would have preferred to call it "ironic"... but may have missed.)
I grew up as an intelligent person who believed that good ideas and hard work would gain promotion. Wrong!
I reached far enough up the organisational structure to see incompetence and politicking getting more rewards than ability. eg I tried to get the monthly employee award given to a man who could work wonders in administration. No luck, he had been cheeky to my boss.
In truth I agree with almost all of your comments. A minor disagreement: where you write, "the things we value most...", I believe it should be "the things some of us value most..." There are far too many people who value only success at making money.
Yes, there is a huge need for better education for intelligent children. I was with the Gifted & Talented Children's Association when it started, more than 25 years ago. The need is still there. Kids still get frustrated and depressed if their intelligence has no outlet.
My concern is that *business* is just as reluctant to accept intelligence. We can give our intelligent kids a good education. The smart ones who believe that they should solve *business* problems may soon find that school did not prepare them for the stultifying fitting-to-the-boss'-norm that is required in many areas of today's business.
Yes, that's just my opinion:-) And experience. And observation.
Thanks for your response. I did wonder whether you were being ironic, and looked at a couple of your other posts to verify the tone. It seems your irony is so polished that it has become second nature! I'm strongly in favour of irony, so applaud you for that. Call me an idealist, but I think your conclusions are too bleak. Perhaps I have to think that, as I commence my career in teaching!
I'm not a business person, but I have had enough experience of organisations to see how damaging bureaucracy can be for individual creativity. In my case, I've always left them, which is perhaps why I'm not wealthy and powerful. Perhaps that's also why I'm becoming a primary teacher, in the hope that those kids haven't yet been too damaged by society, including the institution of school.
In spite of the foregoing idealism, I'm actually not that optimistic about systemic change. Systems are slow to change, even inimical to it. We are talking about a whole culture here. I only want to make a difference as an individual, perhaps influencing a few other individuals around me.
My background in philosophy gives me a (benign) subversive edge. It's up to individuals to develop their critical faculties and save themselves from the deadening weight of systems. It may not make them wealthy, but I hope it will give them a different sort of satisfaction. If I can reach a few people in that way, then I will be satisfied.
All the best
Simon
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