Sunday, December 07, 2008

Highly educated does not mean best managers

Way back on May 2nd, in response to a colleague's comments, I emailed him that highly educated people don't necessarily make good executives--in the private or public sector. In that email, I wrote:
"W" is double Ivy-League, and pretty much everyone of his cabinet members is highly educated. Ken Lay was a phd in econ. Only Karl Rove does not have a formal college degree! ..... Robert "Vietnam" McNamara was a high IQ genious, with the best credentials.
In the US, and in many other countries, the educated have created as much (or more) hassles as the not-formally-educated. one of the best leaders we had in the state where I grew up in India was functionally illiterate ....
I am increasingly tending towards an understanding that higher education is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for governance, politics, civics ....
Well, this is the same idea that Frank Rich discusses in his column, whose title says it all:
"The brightest are not always the best"

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