My friend F. is a successful banking manager. When I asked her how she managed to get her last promotion, and do so well at work while raising two kids, maintaining her marriage and never losing her biting sense of humor, she simply replied: “Girl, you’ve gotta be street-smart, degrees are all well, but you’ve gotta work it smart!”
According to the Free Dictionary, being street-smart means “having the shrewd resources to survive in an urban environment.” Well, I would slightly disagree with this definition. In my book, street-smarts does mean having the shrewd resources to survive not just in an urban environment, but rather in any environment, especially in this corporate jungle called work. It makes the difference between those who are ready to successfully tackle the job market, vs. those who really need more office preparedness. Just last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, while nearly 80% of college students said they were “very” or “completely” ready to put their organization skills to work, only 54% of hiring managers agreed with the assessment.
Wall Street legendary trader Ace Greenberg was himself a perfect example of the fact that “degrees and pedigree aren’t a substitute for hard work and street smarts“, as “Greenberg was rejected from a few Wall Street firms before landing at Bear”. Does a formal, even prestigious college education, matters for career advancement? Certainly, yet what matters even more, is what you do with it. Many are the examples of successful moguls who never made it through college, from Dell computer founder Michael Dell to Microsoft founder and Harvard dropout Bill Gates. They made it with the insight, intuition and resourcefulness they possessed, and frankly some of that is seriously missing from the workplace these days.
As the pressure to obtain more and more degrees and engage into more and more continuing education mounts, not enough emphasis is being put on cultivating career street-smarts. From shrewd networking skills to creativity in solving problems at work, to how to navigate the political landscape of our careers, not enough resources are readily available to help.
So do you need career street-smarts more than book-smarts to advance your career? One does not necessarily need to outweigh the other. Yet as you further your career and get ready for your big break, keep in mind you’re going to need just as much street-smart material than book-smart to make it….
The Corporate Sis.
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