Success in life is not defined by academic grades even though good grades will not hurt. The fact is this: a person can make As in a university-life-phase and still fail drastically in a professional-life-phase. While the phase-exams are different, behind them are clear relationships: process. It is safer to hire an A student than a C student as the A student had demonstrated the ability to set goals (every student desires to make good grades) and accomplished them. The key thing is not the A but the process that leads to the A. Simply, if you hire that A-student graduate, and he/she continues to apply those principles, there is a high chance he can deliver A performance in the company.
In other words, the As mean nothing; it is the process that matters. That process includes activity prioritization, dedication, focus, time management, etc which the student had elegantly managed to get A. Yes, he may not be the smartest student in class. The smartest student had been overwhelmed, failing to manage his time, and ended with B.
This is why I tell people that finished with poor grades: your problem is not the poor grades but the processes that produced the grades. Until you fix the processes, you may continue to struggle in your career. If you have the capacity for “C” and worked really hard and made a “B”, you are far better than someone that possess capability for A but ended in B. Why? He is a dropper and is losing steam, and could be falling to the bottom.
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As the new year arrives, I challenge you to examine your processes. Are you producing B grades when you have capacity to deliver A grades in things you do? The world’s business legends are not academic geniuses (you find those in universities) but people who have enviable processes built on solid awareness and observation to solve real problems. They are normal people like us but with great processes in how they operate.
In 2020, improve your process to achieve more!
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Processes! Processes! Processes!
The ‘end justifies the means’ only if you know where to even locate the means, else you keep floating till you disappear.
No great undertaking was a product of guesswork, you must build structures and systems, if you must go far.
When you are given exam of 100 questions with multiple choice answers, if you don’t have a clue on the subject matter, your best guesswork may not guarantee 40%, and you are already failing. If you don’t know how to arrive at correct answers, those options before you become more or less meaningless.
When you take care of the processes, the results naturally emerge, without hassle.
Process is key. It empowers strategy.
You can have the best strategy but if the process to deploying those strategy is not efficient, success will suffer.
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