The World Is Ruled by "C" Students
Copyright © Scott Bradley
Have you ever heard the phrase..."The World Is Ruled by 'C' Students"?
I think the first time I heard this statement, it came from Robert Kiyosaki in one of his first Rich Dad Poor Dad books.
After thinking about it, and looking at the stories of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban and many others who never graduated college, or didn't do too well in school, you have to wonder...how did they make it? How did these sub-par individuals, based on societies standards at the time, build these massive companies if they didn't do too well in school, or never even finished?
Well after thinking about the phrase "The World Is Ruled by "C Students"...I have come to this conclusion...
*The C students are smart enough to realize that they don't have to be an expert in everything, and are smart enough to leverage the efforts of the A students who can do whatever task better than them. The C students realize that they physically can't do everything that all of the A student people can do, and because of that the C students hire and manage people that are smarter than them and pay them for their efforts. The C students realize that if they are the smartest person on their business team, it will not only hinder the companies growth and future innovation, but further make it difficult to ever get anything done to the best of its ability. You have probably heard the phrase, "Hire better than yourself."
The difference between the A student and the C student is that the A student feels like they need to know everything they can about one subject...eg accounting, law, finance...etc....while the C student thinks...I need to know a little about a lot of those subjects so I can sit down with the A students in those fields and have a general understanding about each one of those topics, so it will further help me get things done and build my business. The C student has a know a little bit about what each A student is talking about, so then the A student can fill in the gaps for them...rather than only knowing a lot about a little.
Really when it comes down to it, the C student is one who is a professional manager of A student talent. They know how to leverage the efforts of many, by building a company that needs all of the skills the A students learned in school.
You don't have to be a smart CEO to make it big...you just need to know how to...communicate effectively, know how to motivate individuals, know how to build relationships, know how to adopt to change quickly, and know how to manage your professional people to perform at their highest capacity...aka "People Skills" which can be learned by reading "How To Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.
There is no way a person can build a multimillion dollar business alone...those that know how to leverage the efforts of many, to create synergy which builds the business is a concept one must adopt if they truly want to go down that route.
Now the smarter the C student is...the better, but it is not so much how well they do in school that directory correlates to their success, but rather the degree to which they use their knowledge about a lot of subjects to create a powerful business team to propel them forward in whatever they do.
So are you an "A student thinker" or a "C student thinker?"
Feel free to leave your comments!
Best,
Scott Bradley
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8 comments:
Scott! This is a great blog post... especially since my GPA is slowly dipping further and further (lol).
I look forward to our future successes. =)
-Josh E.
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Bachelor of Economics Candidate, 2009
kjoshua@wharton.upenn.edu
Hi Scott, I really enjoyed reading your article about "C" Students...since I myself received a C this spring semester for a class....I agree with you that a person does not have to always get A's in college or some technical institute to be the best in his career life ...No I am not saying that becuz I received "C" in my 200 level Lit class, but personally have seen ppl with perfect gpa's who sometimes easily get into the game of making three figures....n on the other hand seen ppl work two jobs and supporting themselves sometimes their families getting C's and yet getting that "dream job" on their own...thanks n keep writing Scott
Good article Scott - great read! I have to agree as a former C student myself that the world is indeed run by C students ;).
Hey Scott, I'm really impressed with your blog, and the philosophy you hold... a lot of people aren't aware that our educuctional system isn't designed to breed success, it's designed to create workers... So it's really no surprise that the most successful people in our society are the ones who broke free of that mold... Thanks for the insight Scott and keep it coming.
Justin Charlton
I love the post but I have three things to add:
(1) It is misleading to lump people like Bill Gates with "C" students just because he didn't finish college. He was attending Harvard afterall, went to an elite private school, left during his Senior year, and not because of grades, and was programming from the age of 14 or younger - he is the stereotypical nerd and "A" student
(2) Michael Dell spoke at my school while I was in Undergrad and he said he was a "B" student and he got where he was by hiring the "A" students but also have "B" students on the team because "B"s tend to be more social and outgoing than "A", the introverts and you cannot build a successful organization with only one mindset present.
(3) Jim Collins speaks about Henry Ford in "Built To Last" and the gist of it is that he hired the smartest people to work for him so that they could answer the questions people asked while he focused on running a profitable company. He said he didn't have time to be answering all the questions - so you are very correct with your post.
The reason the world is run by C-students is:
(1) They spend their time networking (aka party hopping) instead of studying.
(2) They aren't smart enough to realize that something is a "bad" idea, and are thus more inclined to try "bad" ideas.
-- Walter Reade (from Wisconsin)
Walter@NMC
www.SpaBeautyAtHome.com
This is essentially a case of both the fundamental attribution error and base rate neglect, where you simultaneously believe that someone's GPA has something to do with their personality type, which is in fact what you are measuring, as well as attribute the factors of a small segment of a population to the population as a whole. By this system, people who never went to college should be the people who do best, and that "A" students are essentially worker bees hovering around a "social networking" "C". This sounds more to me like a fairy tale designed to make people with C averages feel better about themselves in the meantime while they work themselves up to a company after college where with their C degree, unless they form their own company or win the luck game over the next 20 years with fantastic skill, will NEVER be CEO.
all of these people you list went to college, and in the case of steve jobs, bill gates, michael dell and several others of the information technologies went to college before the fields in which they became most successful were even offered at their schools. so unable to find these courses to take at their own colleges, they went out on their own to work in the places that did offer these kinds of information technologies, and particularly in the case of steve jobs and bill gates, they had outside help (steve wozniak and paul allen), who were at the time also controlling directors of their respective companies. Here what you have listed as GPA as the controlling factor is not really GPA, but personality and leadership skills. It is not "C" students who are more likely to find good technologies or good business people, but people with good knowledge of upcoming technologies and people skills, traits that i argue have nothing to do with GPA.
anyways, im done. this has taken enough of my time already... this all seems fairly sugar-coated fair/just world-style thinking.
Interesting...but i think this idea only really makes sense in a situation where all C students are capable of acheiving A grades. There are some people who will study really hard and only get C grade becuase they just arnt clever enough to get above that.
However as a C grade student, who has been predicted A grades, I am largely compelled to agree! :)
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