A collective belief on some of the organizations I partner with has been that people with high IQ’s are likely to be better decision-makers. You surround yourself with the best and brightest and then help them excel is the mantra of many leaders. It makes less sense if you think about the outliers- those gifted individuals who have put in 10,000 hours or more perfecting their craft. During a crisis you often see leadership turn to the retired veteran for counsel. Not out of deference but perhaps they have seen something similar during their lifetime and can offer perspective that comes with having been at the helm for a long enough period of time. Great decision-makers comprehend what they understand and readily ask for more information or input to clarify the voids. Regardless of IQ, this is a unique talent and does not come from a single metric.

What would it look like if we created a measure of decision-making abilities? Would there be a reasonable metric? Guy Kawasaki offered the following excerpt in his Alltop blog:

IQ isn’t everything

“A high IQ is like height in a basketball player,” says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren’t equal. There’s a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there’s a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ.”