Feels like there’s a lot of stuff muddled up in this discussion.
For what the anecdote is worth, I went to Harvard Business School, a self-styled pantheon for the business elite.
The average person was:
- top decile intellect (though probably not higher)
- top decile emotional intelligence (broadly construed—socially aware, self-aware, persuasion skills, etc.)
- highly conscientious / motivated
Few were truly brilliant intellectually. Few were academically distinguished (plenty of good ivy league degrees, but very few brilliant mathematical minds, etc.).
A good number will be at Davos in 20 years time.
Performance beyond a certain level in the vast majority of fields (and business is certainly one of them) is principally a function of having no cognitive and personal qualities which fall below a (high, but not insanely high) hygene threshold—and then multiplied by determination, of course.
Conscientiousness, in fact, is the best single stable predictor of job success for complex jobs (well established in personality psychometrics).
Very high intelligence actually negatively correlates with career success (Kotter), probably because smart people enjoy solving problems, rather than making money selling things—which outside of quant trading, show business and sport is really the only way of being really successful.
There are some extremely intelligent people in business (by which I mean high IQ, not just wise or experienced), but you tend to find them in the corners of the business landscape with the richest intellectual pastures: some areas of law, venture capital, some cutting edge technology fields.
Steve Ballmer—for instance—might deafen you, but he would not dazzle you.
There are some extremely intelligent people in business (by which I mean high IQ, not just wise or experienced), but you tend to find them in the corners of the business landscape [...] Steve Ballmer—for instance—might deafen you, but he would not dazzle you.
No comment on his ability to dazzle, but Ballmer certainly does have a high IQ:
In high school, Ballmer scored a 1600 on his SATs and was a National Merit Scholar.
As a college sophomore, Ballmer finished in the top 100 in the prestigious Putnam national math competition, and ended up graduating magna cum laude in applied math and economics.
2) Mensa, which is supposed to represent the top 2% of the population, accepts a GMAT score above the 95th %-ile as qualification for membership (http://www.us.mensa.org/join/t… )
Feels like there’s a lot of stuff muddled up in this discussion.
For what the anecdote is worth, I went to Harvard Business School, a self-styled pantheon for the business elite.
The average person was:
- top decile intellect (though probably not higher)
- top decile emotional intelligence (broadly construed—socially aware, self-aware, persuasion skills, etc.)
- highly conscientious / motivated
Few were truly brilliant intellectually. Few were academically distinguished (plenty of good ivy league degrees, but very few brilliant mathematical minds, etc.).
A good number will be at Davos in 20 years time.
Performance beyond a certain level in the vast majority of fields (and business is certainly one of them) is principally a function of having no cognitive and personal qualities which fall below a (high, but not insanely high) hygene threshold—and then multiplied by determination, of course.
Conscientiousness, in fact, is the best single stable predictor of job success for complex jobs (well established in personality psychometrics).
Very high intelligence actually negatively correlates with career success (Kotter), probably because smart people enjoy solving problems, rather than making money selling things—which outside of quant trading, show business and sport is really the only way of being really successful.
There are some extremely intelligent people in business (by which I mean high IQ, not just wise or experienced), but you tend to find them in the corners of the business landscape with the richest intellectual pastures: some areas of law, venture capital, some cutting edge technology fields.
Steve Ballmer—for instance—might deafen you, but he would not dazzle you.
No comment on his ability to dazzle, but Ballmer certainly does have a high IQ:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/6/4/personable-ballmer-leads-college-extracurriculars-microsoft/
Notes:
1) HBS’s latest incoming class has a median GMAT score of 730 (http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissi… )
2) Mensa, which is supposed to represent the top 2% of the population, accepts a GMAT score above the 95th %-ile as qualification for membership (http://www.us.mensa.org/join/t… )
3) A GMAT score of 730 is at the 96th %-ile (http://www.testmasters.net/Gma… )
Putting it all together, the median HBS student is at about the 98th %-ile in IQ. So the ‘top decile’ estimate is off by a factor of 5.