I've got a question for you.
Which of you was always top of the class?
All your life, top of the class?
Right.
--Liar (Laughter)
Well, in precisely 9 minutes and 30 seconds, I'm going to make you proud
that you weren't always top of the class.
(Applause)
You're going to go home tonight and tell your partner, your children,
your friends and relatives:
"Hallelujah, thank God, I wasn't always top of my class!"
In 2007, when I started blogging, I began studying the lives of several people
who were successful in their lives.
And each of them was successful in their field, each one succeeded in a different way.
But there was one thing all these people shared, just one thing
which intrigued me, and this was the fact
that these people, these characters -- none of them had been really successful at school.
And some of them had even cut short their education
and others didn't even make it to school
for long periods of time.
So this was a little worrying and frustrating for me when I remembered
all those years in which parents and teachers
told us, you must work hard, you must get the best marks,
you must be one of the best to get into the best higher education establishments
and in the end, I note that the reality is this:
all those who have been successful at the school of life
were not necessarily those who were top of the class.
So this meant we needed an answer to the following question:
Why isn't it necessary to succeed at school in order to be successful in life?
Or even: why is there no direct link between success at school
and success in life?
Because, to mention people you know very well, such as Steve Jobs
or Bill Gates who have businesses - they employ people who were top of the class.
But when did they leave school?
They both dropped out
during their fresher year at university.
So how come, then, that we, who try to be top of the class
end up working in businesses for people who
perhaps don't even know how to read and write?
So that's when I started looking, and luckily
I took the right approach right from the start, so I couldn't - or I didn't have to - look very hard.
I started looking by identifying the qualities these people share
which have allowed them to be successful in life.
And I found 5 of these.
Next, I tried to see these qualities in the education system
all over the world, how are these qualities developed?
Or at least appreciated or accommodated in the education system?
And I was shocked to find I had discovered that these qualities --
not only are they not developed within the education system,
but they are even punished in the education system.
In other words, if you are unlucky enough to possess one or even several of these qualities
you can be absolutely sure that you will be unable to succeed in the education system.
And when you get to the workplace, you will be needing these qualities.
So the first of these qualities is about being passionate.
Just imagine this discussion with Einstein:
you meet Einstein and you say to him:
"Now, Einstein, it seems that you love physics, right?"
And he says to you: "No, I hate physics. You know, I'm only doing physics
because my parents made me do it.
I hate it...but hey, Hamdullah, I've been lucky,
I've discovered a few theories, got a Nobel prize, and all that...well, I've been lucky."
Or it could be that you could talk to Bill Gates, and so you say to him:
"So, Bill Gates, it seems that you're turned on by computers?"
And he says: "Nah, it's just destiny that pushed me to get into computers.
Well Hamdullah, it's really taken off!"
Can you imagine this type of discussion?
It's impossible because we know that these people are passionately enthusiastic.
So, what is passion?
Passion means having an emotional and sentimental approach
to a job.
And if you are unfortunate enough to have this quality as school, you are going to fall in love
with certain subjects, and you will work hard on those.
And you'll hate the other subjects, and you won't work as hard on them.
And as soon as you get to secondary school, you'll discover what we call the subject weightings.
The subject weightings - the head will never come to you at the beginning of the year and say:
"So, what do you like? You like maths? Ah! Let's raise its weighting.
You don't like physics? We'll bring it down."
It will never ever happen like that.
The weighting is already set.
If you're good at maths, physics and languages, we take the highest weighting.
If you like geography and history, and you work hard at those but you hate maths
then you'll never get a good mark, or never the top mark, in the exam.
Which means you'll be hearing this sort of thing all the time:
"He's a hard worker, in certain subjects, he really is very, very good.
But in other subjects, he really could do better."
That's what they're passionate about at school: it's someone who could always do better.
And that's why those at the top of the class have no feelings.
They have no passion. They work at everything!
They work hard in every subject!
And they are good at all the subjects.
And this creates a big problem for those at the top of the class.
Because later on, they can apply to study medicine, law, and accountancy.
They can do it all.
At the outset, they are impressed by their abilities.
But later, when you get to work, they'll say to you:
"No, no, no: Stop!"
If you want to succeed, there are two things that are very important, primordial in life.
If you want to achieve happiness and excellence, you must be passionate about what you do.
But without passion, you can't succeed at work, nor even in your personal life.
Yet at school, we've always been forced to take compulsory subjects, rather than follow our passion.
Second quality: curiosity.
Curiosity is the foundation of all discovery. It's curiosity that allows each of us
to discover solutions to everyday problems.
So -- how does curiosity manifest itself at school?
A curious pupil or student is someone who seeks to know more.
Such a student is more likely to read what is suggested in class, to carry out their own research,
to discover new ways of solving mathematical problems.
And because this student is very proud of what they do,
they are happy to have learned a lot, and will try to develop their own ideas in the exam.
And if the teacher doesn't understand what you are talking about,
you work really hard, you put in more energy than anyone else,
you hand in a really great, highly developed paper, your teacher doesn't get it,
and awards you a shockingly low mark, often accompanied by the remark: Off Topic.
This is why, in the education system, being top doesn't mean you are smart.
In the education system, the fact of being top
just means you have the ability to cram information and then to regurgitate it
just as it was, without developing it at all.
And then when you get to the world of work, you'll be told that no,
to be able to get the third ingredient of success, which is promotion at work,
each time you have to learn, train yourself, look further, know more,
never settle for the information you were given at school.
And you know what the difference is, between these people who didn't pass,
or who didn't complete their education system, in comparison with those who did graduate?
One small difference which changes life.
In fact, those who didn't graduate and who become entrepreneurs, heads of state,
or who take on big projects, they often have this worry about not having known enough.
So they are constantly searching, they are real self-starters.
Unlike those who sat at the top of the class and who, once they've got their qualification, get gifts
and they say to themselves: "I've finished my studies."
And this is where the catastrophe lies.
Third quality: being goal-oriented.
Peter Drucker, the father of management, taught us that ultimately, within companies,
it is essential to have annual, considered, goals. It isn't a matter of achieving high performance and being effective