Smartness....!

Smartness! (Trying out a new topic….! )

What is smartness really?
In my view smartness is the perfect combination of intelligence, knowledge & logic and using them at the right time at the right place.

There are a lot of people who are intelligent & knowledgeable & sincere & hard working & but they can’t get the best of the results due to lack of smartness. One has to understand the application of knowledge & know how to leverage it in the given situation.

The best example can be found in the SALES process.
Explaining a product or the service does not make you a good Sales person. Selling a product does.
A sales person has to be SMART to convert an inquiry into a sale! The sales person has to apply his product knowledge, use his intelligence to judge the customers’ requirement, add logic for the customer to develop conviction in his product & then present all these things in the right way for the customer to actually take the decision & buy his product. It becomes trickier in the context of selling services. On selling services you don’t have a tangible product to show. All you can do is assure excellent utility & support in the future. At this place the SMARTNESS plays a major role.

I have known some extremely successful sales people who have average intelligence & almost negligible knowledge in general. But they are successful because they can very efficiently use SMARTNESS to explain their product to a prospective customer.
To clarify this point; I know of a friend of mine who was pathetic in curriculars (couldn’t even finish graduation in Commerce), average in his intellect & was working at an ordinary level in a consumer durable manufacturing company in sales. I helped him get a Job in an Educational institute. I had sent him for the Marketing Executives post & he came back with the Branch Managers designation. Currently its been a little more than two years with the same organization & this guy is the Area manager for the same institute. Now imagine a guy with unimpressive academics & average intelligence being highly successful in selling Educational Courses! He can do that because he can use SMARTNESS to his benefit.

I think SMARTNESS needs excellent presentation & packaging. One can’t capitalize on his/her SMARTNESS without having a confident approach, acceptable/impressive personality & a gist of the gab or at least a decent way to communicate & put forward his point.
A lot of people, especially the knowledgeable types are generally against of or unsuccessful at the presentation part. They either lack good styles or do not want to adapt impressive styles. They want to very subtly/secretively use their knowledge to their benefit. For scientists this might be true to an extent but for being a successful scientist also you got to have a very bold approach & a likeable/flashy personality (Think Einstein, Newton, APG Kalam etc)

Success
If you consider (average) Knowledge & (basic) intelligence a given then I think the only way to being Successful is being Smart. (Offcourse your Karma counts a lot in the final result but if given non-divine non-predefined factor then….)
I think one can become successful by being SMART. Only being intellectual or knowledgeable or hard working can make you a living for sure but can’t make you reach the glory.
So lets freeze on a new formula to success is by behaving SMART. I mean if you are doing any activity & you want to achieve success then the easiest or most positive way can be applying SMARTNESS.

In my current (business) context, I would strongly endorse this. Why, is because that I think whatever positioning (remember I am an optimist & would like to believe I have some position today!!) I could achieve is only because of the SMARTNESS factor. I mean I had (or have) very basic knowledge about the HR field & its technicalities when I entered this venture. Yet I dint face too many technical hurdles because I could dissect the technicality break it into small pieces of common sense & give a constructive & qualitative output to my clients. Before I could consciously decide I have started giving technical HR consultancy, purely based on the dissected common sense out of the core technicalities! I obviously have gathered some amount of experience, expertise & confidence in the HR filed now but it’s still at an elementary level.
Now comes the next question can someone become smart or is it inborn?
Hmmmmmmmm……… Arguable

I am of the opinion that SMARTNESS can be developed. You know so many people who are simple/stupid/dumb/slow in the past but turn out to be successful/confident/dynamic after their stint in a recognized college or big city or foreign country. Why we see this difference is because what they probably would have developed is the SMARTNESS.
One develops smartness with willingness/inclination/exposure/self-confidence etc.

With exposure what you become is STREET SMART. This one is a difficult one. You need a lot of intelligence & logic to become street smart. (For the unSMART ones; STREET SMART means that you are the master of Situations! Whatever situation that you are put into, you manage to get out successfully!)

I guess the topic & the content wouldn’t be too much of a new find for most, but well I wanted to write something & this is what I could think of.

& yes in my Blog I am definately the SMART guy! SMARTEST of 'em all.............! ;-)