118 Three Absolute Fundamentals for Success

<p>118 Three Absolute Fundamentals for Success</p> <p>Highly knowledgeable people are often at a big disadvantage in business.  They have expertise and experience.  Their opinion is sought after, they have high personal levels of credibility.  They often went to prestigious schools, elite universities, completing challenging degrees.  They have paid their dues and have worked they way up the greasy pole to the upper reaches.  Yet, they have feet of clay when it comes to representing their section, division, department, company or industry.  They are a dud when presenting.</p> <p> </p> <p>There is a skill to presenting.  We talk about “born salesmen”, “born leaders”, “born presenters”.  What we are doing is acknowledging that the roots of their skills have been long in the making.  They showed some capability at a young age around being confident when talking in front of others, or persuading others to follow their lead or selling their suggestions successfully to their peer group.</p> <p> </p> <p>Success breeds success and so as they grew up, these attributes became more and more refined and polished.  By the time we meet them they seem the complete package.  The idea that you had to be born with these skills becomes entrenched in the popular mind.  Usually, it is an excuse for the observer’s own shortcomings.  They haven’t done the work, so they misname the condition as wrong genes rather than wrong attitude.</p> <p> </p> <p>The education of the highly specialized person means many years of diving deep into the nitty gritty of their area of expertise.  This is done at the expense of developing other skills.  The reason we have an MBA or Master Degree in Business Administration is because engineers were so hopeless at everything other than engineering. At school, they were avoiding English classes in favour of science and mathematics.  They never bothered with fluffy soft subjects like debating or philosophy or history or the social sciences.  They were hard science types.  Then they got promoted.</p> <p> </p> <p