The Ascendence Group

This 4 minute video from Tom Peters holds one of the greatest quotes of all time:

In the long run, the A students work for the B students. The C students run the businesses.  And the D students get the buildings named after them.

~ Tom Peters: Educate for a Creative Society

What do you think? Let me know!

Are you developing meaningful relationships?

A few months ago, I wrote a post titled “An Explosion of Networking Noise“. The crux of my argument was this: we don’t need any more communication platforms – plenty already exist. What we need is to learn how to use existing platforms to build and develop valuable relationships.

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Especially with the rise of personal branding, social networking, and most especially in this economic environment, where a powerful network can mean the difference between moving up in your career or moving back home with your parents.

The sad reality is that most of us simply aren’t very good at meeting new people, winning their support and nurturing vested interest relationships. But let me tell you…it’s not your fault! The problem is that most of us have never taken a course in “Intelligent Networking”. These weren’t skills that we were quizzed on in school. If school didn’t teach us this stuff, it must not be important, right? WRONG!

In fact, dead wrong.

Here’s a little secret: …

When you make the jump from college to career, one thing becomes blatantly obvious: the skills that are vital to your success in the real world are not the skills you learned in school.

In fact, these “success skills” are so different that it actually makes you angry to think about what else you could have done with that $100,000 you spent on college – like taking that 12 month world tour you’ve always dreamed about.

Think about it…was Advanced English useful? No, not if you’re a copywriter. In fact, many writers have to be re-trained to write at an 8^th grade level. That’s right…write dumber so people can understand your message! How about Finance…was that useful? Maybe a bit, but it’s nothing you couldn’t have picked up after reading a few decent books. Computer classes? Hell no. You can learn much more from surfing the net and educating yourself than going to class. The truth is, knowledge you acquired in school is not very useful in the real world, at least not on a day-to-day basis.

I became acutely aware of this during my first job at Goldman Sachs. Nothing I studied for the prior 4 years was even remotely useful in that job. It made me wonder what the point of college was. But I digress…

You see, it wasn’t until after I started working that my real education began. As I looked around me, I started to see a knowledge gap – there was a big difference between what it took to be successful in school and what it took to be successful in the real world.

And as my career progressed from Goldman Sachs to a hedge fund, I became more and more convinced about the presence of this knowledge gap. It was inescapable – those who deleted their mental hard drives and forgot all about “getting an A” and instead focused on acquiring “real world” skills were promoted faster, got higher pay, and were happier at work.

As I transitioned from hedge fund analyst to entrepreneur I thought to myself, “How can students benefit from this insight? How can we fill this knowledge gap so that recent graduates can become more successful, earlier in their career?”

And so began the construction of TAG’s Mentorship Program …

TAG’s Mentorship Program is a course in Real World Insight (notice the similarity with the name of this blog?). Not only do students get matched with a professional in their dream company (yes, whatever company they are interested in working for), but they are meeting and discussing topics that are essential to career success. It’s basically an entire relationship designed to help students conquer the “Knowledge Gap” and become more successful professionals.

…

By now, we all know the value of personal networks: who you know in life will get you a job, help you win business and make you a more intelligent human being (assuming, of course, you aren’t networking with career criminals).

But there is another benefit to having a great network: it increases your productivity, particularly when it comes to in-person networks.

A recent MIT study found that in one organization the employees with the most extensive personal digital networks were 7% more productive then their colleagues—so wikis and Web 2.0 tools may indeed improve productivity.

In the same organization, however, the employees with the most cohesive face-to-face networks were 30% more productive. Electronic tools may well be suited to information discovery, but face-to-face communication, an oft-neglected part of the management process, best supports information integration.

Let me repeat: Employees with the most cohesive face-to-face networks were 30% more productive.

So, if you want to increase your productivity (which leads to better jobs, better pay, and a better life), start networking!

Chris Brogan recently asked a brilliant question. Actually, he asked 5 brilliant questions:

1. How could new ideas change education?
2. How can younger generations learn from the body of work of their successors?
3. How can we marry up all the great resources of people who know something great to those of us who could stand to learn more?
4. How can I help those of us who lived in the cubicle farms, and what can I do to share that information in a way that will empower others?
5. How can we equip our youth and/or our students and/or our business professionals?

Each of these questions dances around a singular issue: Today’s learning models are inadequate.

This message is similar to one Charlie O’Donnell has been spreading: “Structures for industry specific learning, particularly when it comes from learning from the accumulated wisdom of successful and experienced professionals, is horribly inefficient.”

So, we’ve got two really smart guys highlighting the exact same issue. Could this spell business opportunity? Methinks so… …