Formal Education - Prepared for Success?

A senior manager of a professional service firm in a very technical field consistently gives the same response when asked about the most significant courses completed in college, in terms of career preparation. “Without question, Speech I and Speech II,” he says. Advanced mathematics, physics, chemistry, and other core curriculum courses take a back seat. Ask any successful professional in a technical field to assess the role of technical aptitude in career advancement, and you generally get a 10-20% estimate. In other words, they owe 80-90% of their success to other skills. Yet 80-90% of the course requirements are technical in nature - either within or closely related to the core curriculum.

I had the great pleasure of taking a college course years ago instructed by Dr. Tim Ryan, respected Economics professor and Chancellor of the University of New Orleans. Dr. Ryan, in a moment of candor, offered this sidebar to a lecture one day – “Ninety percent of what we teach you in college is good for cocktail party conversation only. Hopefully what we teach you is how to think.”

Let’s just say that it’s a consensus – there’s a significant gap between what we need to survive in the business world and what we are given in our formal education.

You’ll pick up skills along the way, but don’t just leave it to chance. Here are a few suggestions on how you can get ahead of the crowd in developing your skill sets and filling in that 80-90% needed to succeed.

Talk to Successful People

There’s no better way to accelerate the learning curve than to talk to others who are successful. By all means, talk to others in your field, but don’t limit yourself. You might gain fresh perspectives by talking to people outside your chosen field. Ask them what were the keys to their success, what were the mistakes they made early on and what they learned, and what books, seminars, or other tools were useful in their professional development. It’s great to learn from your mistakes, but why not learn from the mistakes of others and avoid the aggravation altogether.

More pointers in the weeks ahead.

See http://www.ldv-enterprises.com/ and http://www.fuzzy-widget.com for more business innovation resources.