We’ve Been Getting it Wrong: Drive is More Important than Talent

In the business world, every manager or leader is constantly in search of fresh talent to build a strong team. Top-tier teams are the backbone of the best companies and are critical for firms to continue to produce great results. However, I believe companies are still getting it wrong in their assessment of external talent.

The methods that we use to make hiring decisions or to choose who to put on our teams are incorrect. We often rely on eduction or more specifically prestigiousness of school, academic results, IQ, resume and the method we determine to be the most reliable, the interview. I believe that these are good ‘qualifiers’ as a form of minimum requirements but are pretty inadequate in predicting a sustainable high-achieving performer. I am calling them qualifiers almost the way one could call height as a qualifier (minimum requirement) for basketball, but not necessarily an indicator of future success.

I believe that raw TALENT is important but should only be a partial factor when determining success and a hiring decision. In all of my experiences, exposure to great leaders & performers, and leadership books, I have ascertained that there are two additional characteristics that should be more highly weighted. In addition to ‘Talent’ what should also be considered is the presence of a DRIVER & DRIVE. Below, I used some words/concepts that can be equated with Drive & Driver.

If, I had to put a weighing system on it, I would put 30% on Talent, 20% on Driver, & 50% on Drive. Then when determining the candidacy of a potential member of my team, I would generally use what I have below to categorize or assess the person.

I believe what would be required is to develop a manner in which to measure Drive & Driver. Given all of the tests that already exists, I believe this should not be an extremely tough challenge. I will not put emphasis here on those tests or methods would look like but the important outcome would be to find a way to determine if someone possess the Driver & Drive and there would obviously be varying degrees of each.

To add a little further on the concept of Driver & Drive - Simon Sinek considered an expert in leadership, delivered a popular TED Talk called ‘Start with Why’, where he discusses the principal behind every successful person and business starts off with the question, Why? This Why concept is a similar model to what I am defining as ‘The Driver’. The Driver, in my opinion, is a prerequisite to possess ‘The Drive’, however, having The Driver alone will not give you the The Drive. The Drive is something less emotional, and more of an instinct that one has developed over time via upbringing, experiences, or through repetition. What is clear though, is that it is very deliberate and not something that comes ‘natural’ and would never be categorized as going through the motions or perfunctory.

Why hiring on talent alone is wrong:

In a book by James Flynn, Asian Americans Achievement Beyond IQ , Flynn reveals that IQ is only part of the factor on high professional and educational achievement. His study revealed that when comparing Asian Americans and Anglo Americans of the same IQ, Asian Americans have higher achievements in their respective professional fields. The conclusion was the mentality of Asian Americans, in that they do not give up as easily as Anglo Americans do when faced with tough problems. In one example, students were given 15 minutes to solve tough problems, , after the 15 minutes those in the Anglo American bucket tended to give up, where as those in the Asian American bucket tended to continue to push hard beyond the 15 minutes consistently. A New York Times article called The Asian Advantage by Nicholas Kristof, references a study by Richard Nisbett that reveals that Americans believe that A’s go to smart kids, while Asians are more likely to believe that they go to hard workers. The outcomes are a result of the mentality and proactive attitude towards achievement.

Even the sports world get’s it’s wrong. Often pre-professional combines are used to assess athlete’s raw talent using categories such as height, speed, strength, jumping ability, and intelligence (the Wonderlic test). The results of these sports combines/tests are used to put a score on raw talent on the athlete is often a major factor in determining college athlete’s draft position. An article by Malcolm Gladwell called Most Likely to Succeed , goes into detail, however the takeaway is that there is essentially no correlation between these combine tests and the long term success in their respective professional sports. For example, Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw, considered two of the NFL’s best to ever play the game as quarterbacks, had some of the lowest (relative) IQ scores and would have likely not even been considered intelligent enough to handle the cognitive demand of their positions. Instead, the suggestion is that there should be a minimum requirement, but after this the impact of additional raw talent is diminishing on ones ability to be high-achieving.

We hear the theme over & over again from those at the top of their respective fields:

Warren Buffet

Driver: In his book Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffet on Practically Everything, he says “Find your passion. Take the job you would take if you were independently wealthy. You’re going to do well at it”

Drive: “If you want to become the world’s number one investor, there is no substitute for hard work.”

Kobe Bryant

Driver: “Passion is the fuel for success”

Drive: “I can’t relate to lazy people. We don’t speak the same language. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you.”

Thomas Edison

Driver: “I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun”

Drive: “There is no substitute for hard work.” or “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 was that won’t work.”

Tiger Woods

Driver: “I love to play golf, and that’s my arena. I have a love and a passion for getting that ball in the hole and beating those guys”

Drive: “People don’t understand that when I grew up, I was never the most talented. I was never the biggest. I was never the fastest. I certainly was never the strongest. The only think I had was my work ethic, and that’s been what has gotten me this far.”

Steve Jobs

Driver: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Drive: Jobs’ sister Mona Simpson described him in this manner, “He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. Someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying.”

Cristiano Ronaldo

Driver: “We don’t want to tell our dreams. We want to show them”

Drive: “I never tried to hide the fact that my only goal is to be the best” or George Best, former Manchester United player stated, “The great thing about him, is that he will not quit.”

Jeff Bezos

Driver: “One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions. Your passions choose you.”

Drive: “Work hard, have fun, and make history”

Closing

Talent is important, however it is only a portion of the story when assessing the potential high impact of a candidate. It has been proven that talent alone is extremely limiting in predicting the success in one’s career and in my opinion, the most important qualities are having that DRIVER (passion, love of work, which will feed the DRIVE.

What are your thoughts? Experiences? Opinions?