I read an interesting article this morning entitled “Words of advice from the founder of Sony” and was thinking about it later when chatting with friends about how to motivate teenagers to study for their exams – a hot topic amongst a few of us at the moment!
You can read the whole article here, but I just want to focus on one particular quote by Mr. Morita:
“Never Mind School Records! You can achieve anything you put your mind and heart into.”
Of course he is right and there are some highly educated people with very little common sense and others who didn’t do so well at school but are extremely creative and outstanding business leaders.
In fact, I had a client recently who hadn’t done well at school and who readily admitted that his written English wasn’t very good however this guy is a creative genius with amazing people skills and he now runs a highly successful business – he is aware of his weaknesses but he focuses on his strengths and is incredibly driven.
I’m not saying that education and qualifications aren’t important as I would always encourage teenagers to do their best at school but I no longer advise clients to list qualifications at the top of their CV. It is far more important to know your strengths, the things that you are really good at and love doing and to provide evidence of where you have successfully used these strengths to add value to a project.
So instead of looking back and wishing you had worked harder and got better marks at school, start focussing on what you have control over, set yourself goals that focus on maximising your strengths and create your own success.
As Morita said, “You can achieve anything you put your mind and heart into.”
