Being very talented, super smart or even genius without process is over rated, it may make you feel special yet broke. Take for example, Christopher Michael Langan, an American independent scholar known best by world records of having the world’s highest IQ. He had a perfect SAT score. An average IQ is between 90 to 120. But Lagan’s IQ is “somewhere between 190 and 210. With all that intelligence, he dropped out of an Ivy League college and is today a bouncer in a nightclub!
Maybe you’re just like me, you wonder why the most intelligent people never make it to leadership in this country. Same reason why you may be smarter than your boss. But he/she is your boss regardless!
In today’s world, maybe we all need more than our technical KSA (Knowledge, Skill and Ability) to truly be successful and climb up the ladders of your career path, your industry and nation.
Now let’s explore an interesting fact. A genius is anyone with an IQ mathematically around 140!
There are just a few people in the world with such IQs (Einstein had 150). But that’s cognitive and academical; practically in business, you don’t need to learn how to dissect every Greek and jargon. A business genius to me is one who can see and seize opportunities for economic gains while proving value for all of the value chain and supply chain of its enterprise system. Furthermore it is one who understand strategy and structure for growth. At our firm at Hexavia, we define an HexavianGenius as the one who enters with ease and completeness into the spirit of challenges, opportunities, things and the intention of persons and problems, and then arrives at an end with a solution by the shortest route possible”.
In our world today, if your IQ is less than 40 then you’re considered as “dumb”, dyslexic or mentally incompetent by school grades. Still the world has so many successful dyslexics ruling us. This is the argument for affirmative actions in college admissions. It’s a sound theory and weird view to support why JAMB scores may have been lowered to favour the north and other ELDS’s. It’s a differential balance between equality and equity.
The average IQ is usually around 100, about the amount you need to pass either JAMB, GCSE, WAEC, SAT or to go through college. I know a few people with 116 and above whereas a scientist with a PHD from Harvard might be around 115. Still you can’t accurately measure success and impact by it. But research has it that, once your IQ is past 110, the higher the IQ doesn’t really matter anymore to your chances of success in life. That’s why first class in school doesn’t qualify you for a first class life or even success, for we all at least graduated or at least entered a school.
We see this theory of intelligence and gifts having a threshold advantage in other places. Take for example, just like in basketball, someone with a height below 6 fit doesn’t realistically stand a chance in the NBA. But someone with 6.1ft has an advantage over a 6.2ft and same goes till 6.8 (threshold). At 6.8, we are all at the same and then comes equal chances. So there’s no advantage between 6.8 and even someone who’s 7.2, the difference now comes from speed, team, accuracy, resilience etc.
So, in a pool of people with above average in IQ, then for individual success, intelligence and hard work isn’t the main contributor, but the following
-The cognitive- I.Q and sound neuro linguistic-psychology.
– S.I (Spiritual Intelligence) – awareness of self, realms and Intuition to the right decisions.
-F.I (Financial intelligence) – The breaking even into the mystery of capital through the application of common sense economics, book keeping, finance and management.
– E.I (Emotional Intelligence) – being aware and in control of your feelings and also how you relate to situations and people to achieve a desired goal irrespective of how you feel.
– The ability to be likeable, to work with and through others. Understanding that none of us is as smart as all of us.
– The connections between your left brain (structure) and right brain (creativity).
So, you’re gifted and smart, so what?
You’re intelligent, says who?
You don’t have to know everything. In today’s world of automation, smart phone and robots, knowing everything is irrelevant. The man that knows everyone would always rule above the man that knows everything. Be more emotionally and socially intelligence.
True intelligence is in its tangible application. We need more innovators and social disruptors. Sadly, it doesn’t come from talent or school. True intelligence isn’t grades or complements, but results from real life. It’s your life in order. It is your ability to succeed better.
Beyond nature, nurture plays an important role to success. How we grew up makes a contribution. The fundamental element that defines the quality of your life is the people you surround yourself with, the conversations, mutual influence and the engagements you have with them. Life is like playing chess. The easiest way to be smart is to play with those who are smarter. This year hang around those better and smarter than you, even if you need to pay for it.
Education is moving away from school, and it’s also getting over rated. The fact is, there’s a threshold of knowledge you just need to reach. And it really doesn’t matter where you get it from. You can get it from school or you can get it through association or mentorship or by just mere practicing till you reach the 10000 hour rule (you’d be a master in anything you put up to 10000 hour of practice).
Hang around the vicinity of your interest. Start early enough and stay long enough. You’d become good at that thing, even if you didn’t have a talent for it. The earlier you start, the earlier you tackle the unavoidable mistakes that’ll come from ignorance and the better for you.
Take for example, Steve Jobs dropped out of school too early. But also very early he was mentored and worked in the factories of HP as his alternative. And that’s how he created Apple and a lot of great innovations and gadgets. Cosmas Maduka wasn’t well educated but travelled to Asia quite early as an Igbo trader in the heart of the Asian automobile market, he came back as an equivalent of an educated man and today owns Coscharis Motors. A barely literate Colonel Sanders didn’t finish school, he didn’t start business early but he started making chicken and was well travelled early enough. He found out that he was actually gifted and educated in the business of creating special styles for fried chicken in Kentucky. Today KFC is one of the world’s biggest food brands. Start early and give yourself up for mentorship. The truth is, when a man with experience meets a man with money, the man with experience usually takes advantage of the man with money. He takes the money from the man and leaves him with experience!
I concur 100 percent to the popular saying that if you consistently hang around five poor people, it’s only a matter of time you will be the sixth. The easiest way to also build wealth is to do the same, try to hang around a bit more around wealthy people. Staying long enough in any mental vicinity long enough begins to absorb you into the spirit of that thing. It’s how people build Tacit Knowledge, a psycho-spiritual level of understanding that is almost intuitive.
Education by association is more valuable than formalized learning. Tacit knowledge (as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge) is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. But if you just hang around long enough, it rubs off. It is the kind of knowledge developed, you may not the name of the terms you do or how it’s done but you know what to do (like how an illiterate roadside mechanics may be able to fix the most complex cars without reading the manuals simply through apprentice, or a guy who hangs around his herbalist father till a point where he begins to understand signs of nature, herbs and even chants). The scientific explanation is this; the things you consistently around yourself with, the decisions and choices you make that eventually determine the outcome of your life are governed by the bottom up a neural pathway of the brain which some people call the subconscious mind. It is activated via associations.
As we constantly receive information, the bottom up neural pathway picks it up and feeds it to the top to the bottom neural pathway which then consciously make decisions that determine our experience in life. So most times when we think we are consciously making decisions, the truth is that we are only responding to the pre-installed database that we have accumulated from previous experience, interaction, and information. Watch what you accumulate and consciously accumulate components of what you desire. It’s easier to feature in a future you’ve long pictured.
“….none of us is as smart as all of us.. we can pull this off “
Kind Regards....
Eizu, ©Hexavia!
Strategy. Business StartUps and Corporate Restructuring Consulting
T: 08035202891
Uwaoma Eizu is the lead strategist at Hexavia! He is a graduate of Mathematics with two MBAs and over a decade of experience working with startups and big businesses. His core is in building startups and in corporate restructuring. He is also a certified member of the Nigerian Institute of Management, Institute of Strategic Management of Nigeria and the Project Management Institute, USA. By the side, he writes weekly for the BusinessDay newspaper.
