It’s quite common to come across people who have attained entrepreneurial success despite poor academic record. Meanwhile a lot of top scholars are happy working their way up the corporate ladder in the midst of the middle class rat race. There are always exceptions, of course, but I’m talking about a common phenomenon. As much as I appreciate the importance of a good academic profile, I can’t help but notice its limitations, especially when it comes to making a living in our current capitalistic society. There are three reasons in general.
- Exam’s Pre-determined Scope vs Business Uncertainty
The measurement of academic success is largely based on exam result but we all know that exam questions are mostly set around a pre-determined scope within the textbook. The diligent students will focus on memorising whatever content in that scope and study prior exam questions to gain an edge. In other words, the students are being trained to fish in a targeted and well stocked pond.
You don’t have such an easy life when it comes to business because there is no textbook to begin with. Many entrepreneurs have started their businesses without fully understanding the upcoming challenges. All they can do is solving problems as they come along, improvising and pivoting when necessary. Such important skills are seldom honed in preparing for exam because the inherent system is simply too far from reality. For example, I used to score very well in my Econometrics exam by memorising some of the most complex formulas without understanding any of those shit.
2. Close-book Exam vs Open Book Business
Majority of exams are close-book and students are trained to pull answers from their memories. Even though some questions require critical thinking, you still need to pull the data input from your memory.
In business, all the answers and resources are out there for you to grab. The key is sieving out the noise and extracting useful information to make quality business decision. There are also multidisciplinary solutions that traverse across different fields, such as psychology, economics, finance etc. The winners are those who are resourceful rather than having the best memory.
3. Individualism vs Teamwork
Every student who sits in an exam are trained to solve problems individually. Therefore, his/her performance is very limited to the individual’s innate ability or luck, to a certain extent. If you apply this in business, there is no way you can survive the competition.
Successful entrepreneurs thrive because they are able to bring together a group of people to solve business problems based on their respective strengths. It’s a well known fact that nobody in the world can be good at every business aspects. Even if you can find one who lives in a place with 48 hours in a day to spare, this superhuman can never beat a strong team that generates much higher productivity.
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What have I learned from this simple observation?
First, never ever judge a person’s ability just based on academic credentials, it’s as simple as that. More often than not, those who went to fancy schools are trained to curate their image and mask their weaknesses.
Second, I’ve learned the importance of developing my children’s life skills outside the academic sphere. Of course I’m happy when I see they can read and write well because those are important skills. I was equally excited to see my eldest son playing with toys he didn’t have by making new friends with other kids in the playground. What makes me even prouder is when I see him getting things he wanted through relentless persuasions – something he didn’t learn from school.
Last but not least, problem solving in real life is so much more effective if you adopt an open-book approach. No matter what is the outcome of such endavour, the journey is certainly more enjoyable when u engage with others by being ingeniously resourceful.
The Value Muse 