The passage below is an excerpt from Mike Garvey’s article in the Spring 2009 UW Foster School of Business magazine.  I thought it was a great story to keep in mind the next time someone calls you “smart.”

When an academic or lawyer calls someone “smart,” it is meant as a compliment.  It usually means that the person is good at developing abstractions from a complicated mass of data, is articulate, is able to reason persuasively and often is quick with numbers.

However, when a businessman calls someone “smart,” it is not necessarily a compliment.  While he means the same thing, the term “smart” misses what is important to the businessman: effectiveness.  If good things don’t happen over which the person is responsible, it doesn’t matter how smart the person is; he is ineffective.  I have often heard a businessman describe a manager who he has fired as “really smart.”  So don’t try to be smart; try and be effective.

And obviously he’s not suggesting we be stupid either, but just that “smart-ness” alone doesn’t deliver results.  And results are what matters, whether you’re trying to save the world, build a business, or both.

It also reminds me of a conversion I had with Chris a long time ago discussing someone with good grades.  I, perhaps mistakenly, said the student was “smart.”  Chris sought clarification: “Is she smart, or does she work hard?”  Not that someone can’t be both smart and hard-working, but his argument was that in terms of getting good grades (effective results) in high school, either one of the two characteristics would suffice.

Time to go be effective.

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