爱德曼高管：知识与经验哪个更重要？

我投街头智慧一票。虽然我很尊重我的母校，但在本科阶段攻读经济学时，我并没有真正学到怎样才能在职业生涯中获得成功。虽然我的确通过书本学到了很多商业和媒体经济学知识，但真正的学习还是从离开校园之后开始的。

大学毕业后第一年，我在加州门洛帕克市参与创办了一家小型公关公司。当时我还打算再去读一所商学院，所以我还在准备GMAT考试，忙着填写各种申请表。就是在那时候，我和朋友麦克进行了一场意外的谈话。麦克几年前从一所顶级商学院毕业，正准备从事投资管理工作。

麦克请我喝了一杯咖啡，然后毫不客气地建议道：“你疯了吗？在这个行业，你每天都能获得宝贵的经验，而且科技行业正在高速发展，更何况你经营的这家公司已经有了成功的迹象。你现在竟然打算离开？商学院能教给你的东西，根本比不上你在这里受到的教育。”他的话让我彻夜难眠，第二天早上我就扔掉了商学院申请表。我原以为几年后我还会再次申请，没想到这一拖就是几十年。15年后，爱德曼公关公司收购了我的公司，这时麦克的话又在我耳边响起。我成了爱德曼公司硅谷团队的一员，并且成了公司科技部的全球总裁。我的部门覆盖全球52个国家，拥有600多名员工。

时至今日，我并不后悔为了获得街头经验而放弃书本智慧。或许将来的某一天，我还会去攻读一个研究生文凭，但那也是出于个人提高和乐趣的目的，与我的职业无关。人生中有很多时刻，正确的答案并不会在某本书中等着你。如果一笔交易的大门关闭了，你就需要另辟一条出路。比如说，你正在一个现场直播的电视节目中展示你的产品，这时产品却出了“技术故障”，这时该怎么办？你正要去接受采访的时候，正赶上总统出行，交通管制，你的出租车进退不得，这时又该怎么办？当你不知道是通过收购其他公司还是通过招聘人才来推动公司增长时，这时该怎么办？总之，大多数致胜之道并不在书本里。就算书本里有，终归是“纸上得来终觉浅，绝知此事要躬行”。我们还是要更多地依赖我们的经验和情商。

情商可能是最重要的街头智慧。智商通常与书本知识相关，它决定了我们学习和吸收学术信息的速度。然而情商却决定了我们能否较好地领会、理解其他人的意图，以及能否成功地与其他人进行互动。我们需要知道如何解读情势，如何解读他人，如何迅速地评估局面，如何评估事情的动因和优先性，并且相应地做出反应。随着科技正在推动全球就业市场转型，未来的职场也将变得更加社交化和协作化，上述能力对于各种工作来说都将越来越重要。所以你不妨去读书、拿学位，但同时也要挺进职场、追逐自己的梦想，在追梦的过程中学习。那可能是你能得到的最好的职业培训。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

审校：任文科

I vote for street smart. With all due respect for my alma mater, I didn’t learn what I needed to know to be successful in my career while an undergraduate studying economics. While I did learn a lot about the economics of business and the media, the real learning began once I left.

After graduation, I worked for a year helping to build a boutique PR firm in Menlo Park, Calif. I was getting ready to return to academia for business school — prepping for the GMAT and filling out applications — when I had a surprising conversation with my friend Mike. He graduated from a top business school a few years earlier and was off to start a career in investment management.

Mike took me for coffee and not-so-gently advised, “Are you crazy? Walk away from this incredible experience you’re getting in business every day, a tech industry in high gear and young agency poised to take off? Business school pales to the education you’re getting right here.” I thought it over all that night, and the next morning I dropped the application process, for what I thought would be a few years but has turned into decades. Mike’s advice sang to me again more than 15 years later, when Edelman came along and acquired my firm. I became part of the Edelman Silicon Valley team and leader of a global technology sector team ranging 52 countries and including 600 people.

I have no regrets choosing the street smarts of hard-won experience over book smarts. I may yet return to academia some day for my graduate degree, but it will likely be for personal fulfilment and enjoyment, not my career. The truth is, there are so many moments when the right answer is not waiting in a book. The door to a deal closes and you need to invent an alternative way in. You’re on stage being televised for your product demo when the dreaded “technical glitch” hits — now what? Whether the presidential motorcade has just blocked your taxi on the way to an interview, or you need to choose whether to acquire or hire to grow your company, most winning answers don’t live in a book. Even if they did, we still wouldn’t absorb these lessons as deeply as when we live them. We need to rely on our experience and our emotional intelligence more often.

The emotional intelligence part of street smarts may be the most important of all. While our IQ relates to book knowledge — how quickly do we learn and assimilate academic information — our EQ governs our ability to empathize, understand, and interact successfully with others. For many people, EQ outweighs IQ in career — and life — success. We need to know how to read situations and people, quickly assess what is really going on, consider the motivations and priorities in play, and respond appropriately. It is an increasingly important ability in all kinds of careers as our global job market is transformed by technology and the future of work becomes more social and collaborative. So go ahead, get out and read those books and collect those degrees, but also get out there and follow your dreams, and learn as you go. That may be the best career training you get.