I have read today's Xin Ming Daily (Local chinese newspaper) and came across a article that goes like this :
"Less educated become a boss; Undergraduates becomes a taxi driver"
In Singapore, there are many success stories of companies and many of them does not have a very high education level. Some of the common names we heard of are :
- Mary Chia Beauty & Slimming Specialist Pte Ltd ( The boss's highest qualification is Primary 6)
- ( The boss's highest qualification is Secondary 4 )
- Audio House Marketing Pte Ltd ( The boss's highest qualification is ITE )
On the other hand, we still have not heard of any big name companies that their boss is a degree holder and instead, they are desperate for jobs and some became a taxi driver. *Not saying that taxi driver as a career is no good.
Why is this happening? There are many reasons to this, one of the bosses featured in the article said that academic is important, but character is even more important. This is very true, considering the fact that running a business is not just about intelligence or being smart-headed, its more than that. Other than having a good brain, a boss must have qualities like good communication skills, being trust worthy to supplier and customers, be able to estimate risk and deal with lots of pressure, not only on external, but internal which means your workers, so on and so forth. These are qualities that you cannot learn in school.
How can one have "businessman qualities" than? From what I think, it is about experience. Experience with the society says it all. The common thing that these bosses with low academic qualifications might be that they are working at a very young age. This became an advantage to them as they will gain a lot more working experience with the company. With experience, they are able to see know better how a company is being managed. With experience, they are exposed to many people with different personalities, with makes it easy for them to judge if a person is reliable or not. With experience, they are able to learn and become better in any aspects of business. Experience is something that cannot be taught in any schools and insituitions.
Other than experience, businessmen and bosses desire to learn and never give up on upgrading themselves whenever there is a chance to. Mary Chia went to have management course, same as other bosses, they went for various courses that will benefit them and make them even better more knowledeable on running a business. This is where education comes in and play a part. Being well-educated is not a bad thing after all, as one of the bosses admit that one of the barriers is good communication, as he has bad command of the English language. Having good command of English is not an overnight thing, it is needed to nurture for years. Therefore education creates a stepping stone for good communication which will help businessman. In today's world, it is not enough to just being able to speak in English, but mandrian is important nowadays too as China's market is expanding very fast. Therefore education plays a role in becoming a successful businessman too.
To conculde, it is not possible for a person with high qualifications but no experience to succeed overnight and it is not possible for a person with experience but not willing to study further to succeed overnight too. These two factors and add in hard work will make one successful when managing a business and. This is why some insitutions have attachments or Industrial Experience Programme(IEP) for students. They do not only want students to do well academically, but they want students to get the hang on the working world and gain experience. I will end off with an equation of my own,
Education + Experience + Hard work = Success
Thank you for reading.
