Consistency and Commitment Beat Brilliance and Talent

When I was growing up in Detroit, I went to school with kids whose parents were the Chief Executive Officers of major auto companies and were in other high level roles. Sometimes I would turn on the television and see the same men I’d eaten dinner with at a friend’s house on the nightly news giving a press conference in Washington, or speaking about an issue of national importance. Another one of my friend’s fathers was the CEO of a major national bank and, by the time I was 13 or 14, I was smart enough to realize I could learn a lot from these men. I figured they must all be enormously gifted intellectually and have other skills which I could learn. In my spare time I read books such as Iacocca, about Lee Iacocca, and when the Publisher’s Clearing House mail came to my mother’s house I ordered Forbes, Business Week and a ton of other business magazines so I could impress these nationally important men and talk to them about their careers and [Read more]