Smart Is As Smart Does



Very likely you are familiar with the refrain from Forrest Gump who quotes one of his mother's favorite sayings, "stupid is as stupid does". A quick search on the Internet suggests the saying is rooted in an older proverb, "handsome is as handsome does". In both cases, the meaning is that one can assess qualities like "stupid" or "handsome" by a person's actions and not by anything one can see.


In a recent article, a very smart man named Moncef Slaoui, who is the chairman of global vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline, was interviewed about what makes a person "brilliant" or worthy of the description "genius". He proposes that people who may be considered brilliant are a result of making right decisions at the right time in the right place with the right input. In other words, determining whether someone is really smart may be a function of their actions and not by anything one can see.

Slaoui sets forth ten actions that he thinks increase the odds of a person being considered brilliant. They seem like pretty good pieces of advice whether you earn that distinction or not.


Smart Isn't What You Are, It's What You Do

Strategy/Tips Is there a more threatening word than "genius"? Taught to revere the truly exceptional in our midst - the mathematical geniuses, the stellar entrepreneurs, the literary phenoms - I am often paralyzed by the very idea of brilliance, especially as most people statistically speaking, including myself, do not possess it.

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