Intelligence

So, you’ve received a message but what do you do with it? That’s up to your intelligence. Like money, intelligence is a resource and, as with all resources, just having it isn’t enough. You need to do something with it. I’m sure most of us know someone who is ‘full of useless information’. Someone who’s accumulated seemingly random bits of knowledge here and there then stored them to be accessed when the time is right. I’m also sure a few of us have wondered how such a person might better themselves since they clearly have the capacity to take in information, process it, understand it then store it.

The problem is intelligence. They might have a good memory but they’re not utilising it effectively. Intelligence would allow them to do something with that ability. Stephen Fry, for example, has said he’s not really smart but he has a good memory. If that’s true then he’s used his memory intelligently to get to where he is. That and his comedic talent.

Intelligence gives us the facility of self-awareness. It allows us to measure ourselves against our peers as a benchmark to see if we’ve reached our peak in a certain area or do we have further to go? If we conclude we have further to go, then we seek the next objective and work towards that.

Intelligence allows us to recognise when things are going right or wrong for us. Through the balancing of logic, reason, emotional knowledge, sharpness, etc we can determine if our current trajectory is productive or not. This ability of foresight also comes under the banner of intelligence.

In short, intelligence allows us to know who we are, what we can do and where we need to go to achieve a certain goal. It allows us to evolve and change as we age.

Let’s say you have two sets of grandparents. Both are in their seventies but both lead very different lives. One set leads a fairly mundane and predictable life. Grandpa tends to the garden, reads a paper, watches TV and goes to sleep. Grandma does cooking, cleaning and goes walks. And that’s it for them. The other set plans world cruises, regularly has meetings with a financial adviser to mange their pensions and investments and generally keeps themselves active and sociable.

Who’s aged better? Who’s being more intelligent?

Correct. It’s the latter set because they have enough intelligence to know that looking after themselves, maintaining relationships outside of their marriage, going to new places and keeping on top of their finances all contribute to being able to have a good life for longer.

You want another example? Go look up any older actor working today. Let’s say, 50+ years old. Look them up on IMDB and see how many projects they’ve got on the go. Then go and watch an interview with them. When I say interview, I don’t mean a press junket for a new film they’re promoting. Go find an interview where they are being allowed to talk about themselves and their career on their own terms (A good one for starters is Terence Stamp). Look at their body language and how they express themselves. They’re animated, funny, coherent, compelling and articulate. Just from watching, you can see that this person has made a lot of decisions for themselves and learned a lot from them regardless of outcome. That’s intelligence in action. And you can see that in a number of areas.

I remember giving an interview for an Honours student at my old university and I talked about how students are more willing to do grunt work (call centres, waiting tables, working at fast food chains, etc) compared to, say, non-students. What I highlighted was that these people were intelligent enough to know that they weren’t going to be there for long. This wasn’t the end of the road. It was the beginning. And the skills and behaviours they learn in these places can be used once they’ve finished their degrees. I know this because I did it. I worked in a call centre for three years whilst I was studying. It wasn’t great (frankly, it was soul destroying but it was good money for being a student and evening hours allowed me to attend uni and work. It was a good deal) but I always told myself it was temporary because I was going to graduate and move on to something better. I knew, through intelligence, that I was more capable than the job I was doing. I just didn’t have the experience yet. The same can be said for now. I’m currently unemployed but I’m not sitting idle. I’m writing this blog because I have a novel I’m working on which I want to use to launch a writing career. That’s my long-term goal. The short to medium one is to build a readership. The even shorter one is tweaking my CV, searching daily for new roles and regularly using my network of recruitment agents. Intelligence also allows planning and creativity.

I’m not sitting about wallowing in misery. That’s not a productive use of time or energy. Did I need a break after over six years of not really having any? Yes. Did I want to do it this way? Heck, no. But the opportunity to find something I want to do has been given so, using intelligence, I’ve deemed it a wise move to get stuck into the thing I’ve neglected for some time. Writing.

So, intelligence is an excellent resource. It’s like having an OP superpower only much more toned down for us mere mortals. We can use it to see likely outcomes from a set number of options; we can reflect on the past to ensure anything negative isn’t repeated; we can make the most of the present by recognising the opportunities it offers and we can take all that information, weigh up the pros and cons of all the options using sound judgement and reasoned arguments to come to a clear, concise decision and plan of action.

You can see why the animals and plants don’t stand much of a chance. An overabundance of intelligence is deadly when channelled properly.

Network

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” is the old saying. There’s a lot of truth to it. I’ve seen it in action. When I was at Retail Bank HQ, we had a guy come in who just looked completely out of place. Long, wavy hair, uber laid back and overly friendly. He was like an uncomfortable hippy. Partly because he was. He’d just come from being a butcher in Tesco and, somehow, wound up having a job at one of the world’s biggest financial institutions. How does that happen, you ask.

Mum’s the word.

No, really. His mum got him the job. You see, she’d been working at the bank for years and was pally with the head of my department so, through that, her son got a job. Was he any good? Not really. He wandered in late most mornings, hid behind the parade of incompetence shown by his Greek colleague (who was actually very nice and more competent than him) and had to get bailed out by the more senior and far superior member of the team.

The behaviour continued for months. Under normal circumstances, such a show of unreliability and ineffectiveness would have seen this guy shown the door. But it didn’t happen. To be fair, he did suffer from anxiety and depression but so did I and I managed to come in on time and do my job so I don’t know why this one couldn’t. Maybe it was the steep learning curve of going from a butcher’s assistant to working with the HR systems of one of the biggest and most complex organisations on the planet. Again, under normal circumstances, he’d have been escorted off the premises.

My firm belief was that it was the politicking going on between the mother, head of the department and the manager that kept this guy in a job. The team complained about him (privately and out of earshot of anyone who might report it) and he didn’t really seem to improve. Within the first month of him starting, he tried to make friends with me (I already had him at arm’s reach so was on guard) and he revealed something I really don’t think was a good move.

“I don’t care how many arses I have to kiss. I’ll do it.” he told me.

That was the crux of his career right there. And from then on, I could see how he tried to make friends with senior managers and keep his own manager sweet as well as the department head. Generally, it didn’t work too well because he wasn’t mature enough to hold a deep and meaningful conversation with adults. So, he resorted to being the office idiot. When I watched The Big Lebowski for the first time, I realised this guy modelled himself exactly like Jeff Bridges. The attitude, tone of voice and, for the most part, the attire. It was insane how close this guy was to inhabiting the character. And he did sort of bumble his way into things. This kind of worked for him but, ultimately, no one took him seriously so no real work went his way. What worked more in his favour was getting a haircut and changing his attitude. He started coming in on time and wasn’t trying to be quite as pally with his manager but more showing he could take orders and see them through. In short, he either decided to become a competent worker or, I suspect more likely, to be competent at rimming.

What I learned about this person was that we wasn’t particularly good at networking in a corporate environment. In general, he wasn’t that good to talk to. Not enough variety of conversation.

And that’s a key component of building a wide-reaching network. Not just being able to talk about a variety of subjects but to have thoughts and opinions on them too. It allows people to find common ground with you which, in turn, may lead to admiration, respect, friendship and so on.

The ability to create a network makes many aspects of life much easier. A loving family will support and guide you no matter what. A good group of friends will share in your worst moments and celebrate in your best. A set of well-selected colleagues will make your life at work much more bearable especially when the proverbial hits the fan.

Knowing who to go to in a given circumstance is a key strategy for personal growth and maturity. You can have all the knowledge, talent, skills and resourcefulness going but they mean nothing if you don’t know someone who can provide a channel. Imagine if Lewis Hamilton didn’t know where his car went for repairs and maintenance. Or if Serena Williams didn’t know who supplied her gear. It would make them look pretty ignorant and arrogant since they have to work with those people to ensure they perform at their best.

Let’s go two or three decades back. Imagine if their parents never cared enough to seek out ways to get their talented children a shot on the world stage? We’d be deprived of two of the best athletes the world has seen.

Or imagine if Bruce Dickinson decided not to meet manager Rod Smallwood at a tent during a festival where they discussed him joining Iron Maiden as the new frontman. The band would have likely never made it out of the 80’s. Instead, they became one the biggest bands on the planet.

The point I’m making here is that your connections help determine your path. We’re told that the main reason people leave their jobs is because of poor culture and poor managers. It’s true but the reason it’s true is lack of connection. If you don’t feel like you belong to a place, you end up isolated and wayward. Lack of a good, supportive network can send people on dark and lonely paths and because they’re not in the network, no one sees them so it can get worse unless they bump into someone else who happens to have gone astray. And, depending on how they got astray, will help determine if that person forges a positive connection or continues alone and unconcerned for.

A network of people offers a mirror of yourself. You look at other people and you know why you get on with them. Because they have a piece of something that’s already within you. And vice versa for them. Our network represents us no matter how big or small.

And how you go about creating one is down to the final attribute.

Smart

This is the big kahuna. If the previous attributes were all weapons this would be John Wick.

To me, being smart is not about intelligence as many people seem to think. If that were true, all the intelligent people would be in far better places than they already are. Academics would be running the show and not politicians. Education would be of a far higher standard and…

Education. That reminds me. I read a BBC article (This one – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46019429) last year and I wasn’t surprised with its findings. The article says that there’s an increasing number of medical students who lack dexterity. Tasks like sewing fabric or cutting wood which were traditionally taught at home or at school are no longer done so. This led to a generation who didn’t really know how to use their hands ergo the students had to be taught these skills first before being taught how to sew tissue or cut through bone.

Intelligent people yet not so smart. The smart thing for them to do would be to have learned these skills ahead of time which, in turn, would have saved valuable time being used training said skills and teaching the skills they’re supposed to really learn.

Smart is being prepared so you can be more efficient when it comes to doing a particular task.

Smart is knowing the levels of all your other attributes and knowing which one to use and when. If you have an attractive personality but are also assertive, a smart person would use their personality more when at a party. Vice versa when in the office negotiating a deal. A not so smart person would suck at both.

Let’s take musicians. Many of them know that they’d never be where they are if it weren’t for talent. They knew they had it and were smart enough to work on it. They gave up all other pursuits and submitted themselves only to the music; They worked with what they had available be it cheap instruments, a garage or someone’s basement; They worked on the music and nothing but the music; They worked on making music they wanted to play but also people wanted to listen to; They drew in other people to get them listening to it; They made connections with the right people to get shows so more people could hear their music; And they let everyone around them know what was going so they could collaborate on all aspects of the music.

That example there shows all attributes being used and you can apply that to pretty much any scenario involving someone you think is successful or is on their way to success.

No matter what you think of Trump, he was smart enough to get himself elected. How it happened, we may never fully know but you don’t get the White House without being smart. I’m not going to turn this section into a vehicle for hating on Trump but you do have to hand it to him. The opportunity was there and it was taken.

He may not be the most articulate, humble, diplomatic or respectful leader but he was elected at a time when America wanted some real change and the Democrat candidate wasn’t convincing enough. So, for Trump, it was probably the best time to run for office.

Where was I headed with this last section? Oh, yes. Utilising your best attributes is a sign of being smart. Part of this, I believe, comes from the fact that we, as a species, have outgrown our environment. We went and created one of our own and so I use the term ‘smart’ in a holistic and evolutionary sense. In the way the smartphone has gone beyond the ability of making and receiving phone calls. It can still do that but it can do a heap of other stuff too.

We have gone beyond our relatively simple purposes. Yes, we still need to eat, breathe, drink, reproduce, sleep, etc but we do it now in a very different way than we used to. The bar was raised. We, in almost every sense, separated ourselves from our animal kin. They are no longer the competition. We are.

And it’s only really been in the last few centuries that we’ve been competing against each other. The fights started out over land, food, water and people. Then, when we could build, we fought over property.

Since there hasn’t been a conflict like WWII in over 70 years, we’ve had to compete in new ways and these attributes are becoming more and more crucial. People on decent wages are having to fight over where to live because people with property to sell charge higher prices than is perhaps reasonable.

We compete for jobs and have to show we’re driven, passionate, determined and innovative.

We even compete over popularity now. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube are the platforms we use to determine whether to follow you or not regardless of whether your content’s any good or not.

Yes, to some extent, we’ve always done that but generally there was real meaning behind it. You’d follow a particular faith because you believed it would take you on a better path. You followed a company because it would give you security for life. You’d dedicate your life to a cause because it was a vocation and not because it looked good on your CV. Now, companies demand loyalty and commitment upfront which makes the competition even harder.

It would seem that thinking only about ourselves is a misguided notion to believing we’re making the smart choice.

Wrong.

By not being smart and utilising our attributes effectively, I believe we’re heading for a lot of uncertainty. If anything, I think we’re reaching a level where our artificial structures are starting to fail. Take the US presidential campaign and the UK referendum on the EU. In both instances, we had people desperate for change who voted for uncertainty over nothing. That’s a scary prospect and I think it will have a number of repercussions.

A big contributor to the respective political situations has come from people in positions of great power and influence with access to vast resources thinking they can play another game. They are thinking they can be above the selection process and it’s backfiring. Why? They’re not submitting to the will of their people; They’re not popular in any real way; They abuse the funds the people have handed over through taxation; They are wasting resources rather than being prudent, efficient and clever with them; They are not being clear in what they tell the people; And they are abusing any and all networks to cover themselves and cast themselves in a better light.

Go on. Apply those attributes to those two very current situations and tell me how you don’t get failure. What’s going on there isn’t smart. It’s dumb. Horrendously so. Painfully true as well.

Another problem with not being smart is that, if you have one, some or all of those attributes and you don’t use them then you’re not just a liability to others but you’re a liability to yourself. If you have the raw materials for success then go and refine them and turn them into an asset.

Take the character Forrest Gump. He wasn’t intelligent but he was smart. He built an influential network of people who were genuinely invested in him as a person. He did communicate clearly and he put himself through an awful lot which drew him a big following. The culmination of which saw Forrest being given a lot of money from his share in the investment of Apple Computers. He used that money to renovate his local church, build a medical centre for Bubba whilst giving Bubba’s family enough money to never have to work again. And he did these because he knew he wanted to.

These are smart decisions because he gave back to those who gave him what he needed to get to where he eventually arrived. From what I can recall of the character, he had six of the nine attributes (Money, Assertion, Network, Submission, Communication and Attractiveness) and made as best use of them as he could.

I want to end with this. The reason I called this ‘Artificial Selection’ is because we have subverted the natural order. People who have been placed differently in the natural world are able to get higher in our world. That’s great if you have a disability because you can achieve more of your potential as opposed to being left to suffer and wither. But what about those who may be less deserving of their place? They can use the world to their advantage to hide, plot and manipulate. The natural world is cruel but fair. You have to be strong to survive. In our world? Not so much.

The former CEO of RBS, Fred Goodwin, was able to get that spot through greed, narcissism and egotistical agendas. He was anti-social and, if you read the book ‘Shredded’ by Ian Fraser, you’ll learn he treated the banks’ resources like his own. Such a thing can only happen in a world where all the components can be moulded to fit your purpose. True, he had money, a network, a clear trajectory, intelligence, was articulate but the two main attributes missing for his role were attractiveness and submission. Being reclusive and controlling didn’t make him popular with shareholders, investors or clients. I believe these are two key attributes that make a great CEO and, with them missing, played a major role into why Fred Goodwin caused RBS to collapse and take ten years to turn a profit.

And that’s the problem. The mechanics of our world are human. The stock market is driven by emotion. If a favourable announcement is made, market sentiment pushes the value up to reflect excitement. A less favourable announcement pushes it down out of fear or panic. The stock market, like humans, is irrational and thus responds accordingly.

So, if we are to succeed whether individually or collectively, we must utilise our attributes as best we can.

As the saying goes, ‘Keep It Simple Stupid.’

Now, that would be smart.