I teach very technical skills, and I am very clear in my requirements and point values for what etc., so I don’t get a lot of it. But there are more subjective pieces that can be discussed.

One of my students came to me with a short essay on which she had earned 9 out of 10 points (in my grading system, that would be 1% off out of 100% for the total class), and demanded to know what she could have done differently for that 1%. What could I say except that it was well written and clear but not outstanding. Yes, you did exactly what I asked for, you did it well, but some folks in the class went beyond that–they drew from other classes or life experiences to illuminate their points.

I think a perfect score should be exemplary in the most literal sense. When a student does that, I ask permission to use their paper as an example in later classes.

Here is what I love about grad school, though. The first time a student completely disagrees with me and makes an excellent argument backed up with research–and not only gets an A, but usually a joyful call-out in class. That’s when they blossom into real grad students.

Cathy

So all your students begin by asking for an A or B. This could be the Lake Woebegon Effect of course–all children above average–but where do you start negotiations on salaries and advances? I’m told some people in the Middle West and New York start out asking for a little more than they’re willing to settle for, but perhaps things are different in New England.

I think the grim pursuit of credentials may relate to anti-discrimination laws, a tendency to sue over disappointments and, perhaps most importantly, organizations so large that the people who actually hire, fire and promote don’t know any of the people involved. George Marshal had a notebook in which he recorded what he knew or had heard of Army officers, and appointed them accordingly when he became Chief of Staff. It seems to have worked well, but I doubt the entire officer corps was 5,000 men in 1940. It was in the vastly expanded Cold War army one first hears of “ticket punching.” Perhaps things are not so vastly different in the civil service or large corporations.

Hard work. I keep going back to Clausewitz. He keeps saying “act quickly and with energy; concentrate on the objective; don’t disperse your forces.” He NEVER says “do this and you will win.” He says “do this and to the extent your opponent doesn’t, you’ll do better than you would have otherwise.” Clausewitz drew the short straw often enough during the Napoleonic Wars to cure him of any notion that life was fair.

And the general principle holds for almost everything. If I lost weight and ran ten miles every day (again) I still wouldn’t be a good runner. But I’d be a better runner than I would be otherwise. I’d beat those of equal potential who didn’t work at it, and maybe some of greater potential if they were careless or neglectful enough.

Indeed, I can’t think of a real gamechanger who didn’t have both talent and hard work going for him. Hard work–training, practice, taking pains–makes a good, solid professional. Sometimes in an organization this is all that’s really needed. Sheer genius without discipline produces meteors–the sort of people who feature prominently in “Whatever happened to?” articles and programs.

But in situations where doing things “by the book” just means you’ll lose slowly, and you need someone to kick over the table and invent a new game, you need the sort of genius Malcolm Gladwell described in Outliers–natural talent plus about 10,000 hours of training and practice. For starters.

I used to know a little about WWI fighter pilots–the very embodiment of “live fast and die young.” Competition was fierce and deadly, and equipment frequently unreliable. They were all very young with sharp eyes and good reflexes, and most of they spent their evenings with the traditional wine, women and song. The highest “ranked” American was Eddy Rickenbaker. He spent HIS evenings going over every round of ammunition his machine guns would fire the next day looking for defective rounds. He may not have had the sharpest eyes and the fastest reflexes, though he was obviously good enough. He WAS the pilot whose machine guns never jammed, and consequently one of the ones who lived through the war.

Some people are lucky like that.