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loquitur · 07-29-2008, 01:49 PM

Well, Roachboy, it's a lot less arbitrary than you think. The correlation isn't perfect but it's there. I see it in the law firms I deal with and I see it in the businesses I deal with. People who are full of shit and kiss ass a lot can go only so far because at a certain level if there are no results it shows and there's no place to hide. Yes, there are time-servers and goldbrickers everywhere. Those aren't the ones who tend to get ahead because they don't have the drive. There are people who have drive but no smarts, smarts but no drive, smarts and drive but lousy luck or timing -- and on and on and on. Plus, there is a different mindset for rising in an organization versus starting a business on your own. I see lots and lots of these kinds of people.

Here's a comparison to chew over. There is a large public company I represent, and my contact there is one of the in-house lawyers. He asks me a question, I do my work, and I try to figure out a way the company can do what it wants to do - but if the answer is no, it's no. He's not happy about it, but if he's sure I have really thought the problem through and exhausted every possible way, then he's ok with it. Then I have an individual enterpreneur, street-smart, aggressive, and if he asks me a quesiton, I also try to figure out a way he can do what he wants to do - but if my answer is no, he fights with me about it because he's not used to being told no. And it takes me a while to get him on board. Very different types of people. These are actually archetypes, believe it or not. There are entire categories of people like each of them. The first guy is very smart, but he's not going further. The second guy would succeed if you took everything away from him and plopped him down in the middle of the Kalahari. He won't be a CEO because he's too much of a lone ranger, but he will succeed.

I guess this is a longwinded way of saying that even a non-perfectly-linear correlation is nonetheless a correlation. Yes there is luck involved. Doesn't destroy the correlation, though.

07-29-2008, 01:49 PM	#76 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	Well, Roachboy, it's a lot less arbitrary than you think. The correlation isn't perfect but it's there. I see it in the law firms I deal with and I see it in the businesses I deal with. People who are full of shit and kiss ass a lot can go only so far because at a certain level if there are no results it shows and there's no place to hide. Yes, there are time-servers and goldbrickers everywhere. Those aren't the ones who tend to get ahead because they don't have the drive. There are people who have drive but no smarts, smarts but no drive, smarts and drive but lousy luck or timing -- and on and on and on. Plus, there is a different mindset for rising in an organization versus starting a business on your own. I see lots and lots of these kinds of people. Here's a comparison to chew over. There is a large public company I represent, and my contact there is one of the in-house lawyers. He asks me a question, I do my work, and I try to figure out a way the company can do what it wants to do - but if the answer is no, it's no. He's not happy about it, but if he's sure I have really thought the problem through and exhausted every possible way, then he's ok with it. Then I have an individual enterpreneur, street-smart, aggressive, and if he asks me a quesiton, I also try to figure out a way he can do what he wants to do - but if my answer is no, he fights with me about it because he's not used to being told no. And it takes me a while to get him on board. Very different types of people. These are actually archetypes, believe it or not. There are entire categories of people like each of them. The first guy is very smart, but he's not going further. The second guy would succeed if you took everything away from him and plopped him down in the middle of the Kalahari. He won't be a CEO because he's too much of a lone ranger, but he will succeed. I guess this is a longwinded way of saying that even a non-perfectly-linear correlation is nonetheless a correlation. Yes there is luck involved. Doesn't destroy the correlation, though.