Smart is Just Less Dumb

Malcolm Gladwell: The Talent Myth [The New Yorker]. Spend time at research labs, universities, think tanks, etc, and it won't take long to realize that IQ tends to be a necessary condition but is not sufficient one. Smart people focus on the former and ignore the latter.

Hospitalarians

How to Win Friends and Influence People vs the Manhattan Restaurant Biz:

[Hospitality. Sweet. by Linda Tischler, Fast Company.com]

In a city where the competition for culinary primacy is practically a blood sport, Danny Meyer's restaurants invariably come out on top. In Zagat's survey of New York's "most popular" restaurants, Meyer has 4 of the top 20. But as proud as he is of his chefs' skill with a risotto, or their sublime touch with yellowfin tuna, Meyer says it's not the food that keeps guests coming back. It's because the staff at his restaurants are so, well, nice. "The power of hospitality," he says, "has been the single greatest contributor to whatever success my restaurants and business have had."

A slim, soft-spoken man who clearly revels in working the tables in his restaurants, Meyer has spent more than 20 years mastering what it takes to deliver a first-class customer experience. The principles he has embraced (and which he spells out in his new book, Setting the Table: The Power of Hospitality in Restaurants, Business, and Life, HarperCollins, 2006) are as applicable to airlines, dry cleaners, and cable operators as they are to restaurateurs. The trick, Meyer says, is to hire "hospitalitarians."

The idea is vital: Surround yourself with people whose emotional quotient is as high as, or higher than, their IQ.

I once took an emotional IQ test and was insulted that it gave back a number that was about half of my "intellectual" IQ. The more I learn, though, the more accurate that test seems. That aside, "hospitalitarians" is a horrible name.

IQ test

The real IQ test is whether you have any better to do than this...