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The workplace is desperate for good skills, good ideas and
good thinking to deal with the accelerated pace of change today. This current environment poses a lot of
questions; most of which do not have simple “right” answers. Because this is Duke we’re talking about at
the moment, a basketball analogy seems apt.
In hoops they talk about the pass before the pass. By this, serious fans mean the action that
sets up and enables the ultimate success of the play. The pass before the pass is not usually
replayed in game and rarely shows up on Sportscenter highlights. For the most part, it remains uncelebrated
(except by aficionados) – but it is absolutely vital for successful execution.
Translation for a business playbook: Often it’s about the
questions you ask, not the answers you memorize.
It wasn’t always like this.
Recently, I discussed the current landscape with a strategist at a top
consumer entertainment company. We were
talking about how difficult the decision making process had become. I maintained that executives used to
pronounce pompously “this is the way it’s done,” but that they no longer
could. He argued that they still utter
that phrase – but, he allowed, now they say it with a note of fear, not
arrogance.
Beware, ambitious B-school students. Cheating is not like
breast augmentation where the perceived benefits stay with you for life. An MBA with an artificially–enhanced GPA will
immediately feel the pressure of the real world where there is nowhere to turn
for extra, surreptitious, illicit “help.”
The ugly truth is that once you leave school and start working, your GPA
is irrelevant – and it certainly won’t save you from drowning in the sea of
conflicting information, shifting paradigms and disruptive business models.
That’s not to say it won’t land you that plum first job and
put you into the system at an elevated level that will bring financial benefits
for years to come. Or that it isn’t a guaranteed network. And it’s not to say that organizations don’t
cover their fannies by selecting MBA’s from a certain institutions because even
if the employees don’t work out they can always claim they “should have” – it’s
a degree that largely mitigates the risk of the hiring process.
But most managers will tell you their valuable employees are
employees with certain characteristics – a willingness to roll up their
sleeves, an ability to consider a fresh approach, pattern recognition. As one c-level executive lamented recently
“It’s just really so much harder than you’d think to find good, smart,
hardworking people.”
Bring me a graduate who is more than the sum of his
transcript – and I’ll give you a valuable employee.
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