How Important Is Having A High IQ To Being A Successful CEO?
There's a school of thought that says you have to be a super genius to be a successful startup CEO. Ha!
Yes, you need to be smart, but a super genius? Hardly. I'll explain what's a lot more important to your success than a high IQ in this short video.
Read The Video Transcript Below:
Years ago I worked with somebody who I'm going to call Gavin. And Gavin was probably a genius. I would imagined he had a PhD in engineering. He had an MBA. He was unbelievably smart.
Anyways, you know, Gavin was brilliant, but as a businessman, Gavin left a little bit to be desired. He just couldn't be clear and coherent with his thoughts at all.
Everything was convoluted. Everything was complex. Everything was more difficult than it needed to be.
Even his engineering solutions, as brilliant an engineer as he was, were way too complex. They never worked right at all.
So when you wonder, "Gee, you know, Does a high IQ mean that you're going to be successful in business?" Well, Gavin's kind of a case study in that.
IQ has nothing to do with being successful in business.
You don't have to be a genius because therefore all geniuses would be successful in business. And Gavin wasn't. Gavin was a disaster. You know, in most things that he touched failed.
One of the worst decisions that the CEO of the company I worked for made was making Gavin a general manager of one of the business units of the company. I don't to this day know why the late Jack Gifford did what he did because it was a horrible mistake.
The business that Gavin ran just never went anywhere, and then eventually somehow or other Gavin parlaid this success into running another startup . And that company completely failed and fizzled.
To all of us who worked with Gavin, we knew, we knew he was going to fail. It was clear to us he was going to fail because he just wasn't clear in his thought process. So how important is Iq? Look, I don't think you can be a dummy and and be successful in business.
However, do you need to be a super genius? No.
You just need to be reasonably smart. Be clear in your thoughts. Keep things simple. Simplicity in business is everything. The simpler, the better.
And if you run across somebody like Gavin that works for you and tries to tell you, "Gee, it's more complex than you think." It's probably time to move that person on because that person doesn't understand that in business, simplicity is everything. That's what you're looking for.
And for you, when you're running a company, keep it simple.
That's the mantra to live by. And that doesn't require you to be a PhD. Have an MBA, and to all those things that Gavin supposedly did and still fail. You can do it by just being smart and making clear, concise decisions and making it easy for you and your team. I'm Brett at brettjfox.com. Have a great, great day. Thank you.