Two
weeks ago my fifteen year old daughter Funmi made me an offer. She wanted me
(her traditional father) to get her an iPhone to which I declined and then she
offered to work for it. She would be one of my agents selling my books on
commission. She started selling and the money started rolling in for her. It
got me thinking. Why do some people see opportunities while others see only the
obstacles? Funmi had a need. There were barriers but she saw an opportunity and
she went for it. There is a phrase I coined for the ability to see
opportunities which I call the Opportunity Discerning Quotient (ODQ).
A
persons ODQ is not about how academically intelligent a person is but about how
smart they are. There is a difference. Smart thinking and intelligence are not
the same. I have seen some extremely intelligent but practically dumb people in
my lifetime. The fact that you come out tops in an IQ test does not mean you
will come out tops in life. I’m sure we all know people who are so intelligent
yet whose lives do not reflect the kind of intelligence that they radiate. What
is the point in being great at winning in arguments and aptitude tests and yet
not winning in life? The three most common traits that run through people with
a very high ODQ are; Humility, Tenacity and the application of knowledge.
Humility
is what makes a person teachable. It is what makes a person ready to unlearn
some things to learn others. It is what makes a person result driven instead of
being confined by the fear of failure or criticism. Humility is what causes a
person to know that all that they know is not all that is to be known about
anything. It makes them understand that their way is not the only way or the
absolute way.
Tenacity
is what makes people insist on finding a way even when there seems to be no
way. It births the mindset that says if there is no way then maybe it is my
calling to create the way. The lack of tenacity is what makes many people not
to see beyond the obvious. Those who do not look beyond the obvious can never
achieve beyond the ordinary. Most people look at what has been done to
determine what they can do. They get permission from the past to live in the
future. Others are tenacious enough to demand for a future that has no
connection with the past and they go ahead and create that future. Their
actions then give permission to the majority – the masses that can do nothing
unless they have proof that it has been done before and that it worked.
The
application of knowledge is another determinant of ODQ that rates very highly.
Academically Intelligent people are excellent with the abstract. They can do
well with equations. They remember case studies. They can tell you who did what
where and when. Smart people are able to take that knowledge and convert it.
They are able to adjust and amend it to produce results for them. They are able
to bend the story and stretch it and force it to apply to their situation. For
the normal intelligent people, the story remains someone else’s experience and
they can tell you that persons experience with passion but they are never able
to convert or apply it to solve problems. That disconnect between what is
learned and how it is applied is a major indicator of ODQ levels. It is not
just in reading. It is in identifying that you can take what you read about or
learn, contextualize it and then reproduce it. Many people dissociate
themselves from the things they read because they have an inbuilt mechanism
that tells them it cannot work for them.
The
person with a lower level of intelligence but high level of humility, tenacity
and application of what they know is more likely to see opportunities quicker
and be more successful than the person with a high level of intelligence who is
proud, lives within the obvious and is a reservoir of knowledge instead of
being a processor of knowledge.
Remember,
the more conservative the thinking, the less dramatic and inspiring the
results.
Wale Akinyemi
