太聪明的人为何不适合创业？

本文为与《创业者》杂志的合作内容。下文最初发表于Entrepreneur.com网站。

    创业者的一些品质可能会成为其成功路上的绊脚石，其中最有违常理的一种——便是聪明。你越成功，越有才华，便越难经营好一家公司。

    你可能认为，按照正常逻辑，聪明、有进取心和有才华的人，应该是创业的最佳人选，但很可惜，事实并非如此。

    “我事事都要比人强”的挑战

    聪明人的问题，早在老师当年分配令人厌烦的“小组项目”时就开始出现。我们都知道职场中的80/20规律，即20%的人完成80%的工作，你认为小组项目会是什么情况？每个小组最聪明的学生决定完成大部分工作。他们不想平均分配工作，以免自己的成绩受到影响，并且他们也不敢指望蒂米（那家伙平均每周有两天逃课，另外三天则在课堂上睡大觉）能做好自己那一部分，要是他还没有把任务忘得一干二净的话。在学校里，让蒂米尽快跟上进度，是不会带来任何好处的。算了吧——聪明人会接管一切，自己完成整个项目。

    聪明人的工作周期由此开始。最聪明的人做任何事情都比大多数人出色。他们更擅长写作，更擅长计划，更擅长推理。他们各方面都更加出色，除了经营公司。这时，他们不再出色；他们会陷入麻烦。

    一个人每天只有24个小时，而且需要腾出时间睡觉、吃饭、洗澡，还要做一些其他事情。但聪明人由于忍受不了别人把事情搞砸，于是决定凡事一肩挑。最后，他的企业也就成了一个人的独角戏，无力继续发展。

    懒惰者为什么能够主宰创业界？

    有些懒惰者比“聪明人”更适合创业，这听起来很有趣，但却是不争的事实。为什么呢？因为他们很早就学会了让自己身边围绕着一群聪明人，替他们完成工作。他们知道如何分配任务，以及如何操控其他人做他们不想做的事情。

    让公司实现自动运转才是大智慧

    理想情况下，聪明人应该将他们的才能传递给其他人。但由于聪明人习惯于大包大揽，他们无法学到带领公司走向成功所需的关键技能，包括让公司自动运转和授权尽可能多的任务。聪明人应该用一种易于遵循的格式，总结出其聪明智慧的核心，让其他人可以复制。

    太聪明不是好事

    对不同寻常的、复杂的和与众不同的事情，聪明人通常都颇有天分。创业史，他们不喜欢遵循KISS原则（即保持简单，直接），但这正是公司成功的必要条件。

    你或许认为，一流制造工厂的组装线，或麦当劳这类全球性公司的运营工作，都要遵循一套非常复杂的流程，但事实上，它们都是由一系列非常简单的功能组成的。每一项任务被分解成易于遵循的步骤。组装线上的工人重复执行一些被明确定义的任务，麦当劳的厨师、收银员和得来速(drive-thru)订餐员也同样如此。个人不需要太多投入，因为每一件事都已经被标准化。

    许多全世界最大最成功的公司，并未将最聪明的人作为主力。事实上，这些公司大多数员工都是普通人，有时候甚至是有些蠢的人。这些成功的公司只需要少数聪明人，他们的任务就是将大部分任务标准化、自动化并进行授权，保证普通员工在工作时不会陷入混乱。

    所以，如果你不能利用自己的聪明才智，找出一种简化工作任务的方法，最终实现成功，那么你的聪明就不利于你创业。当然，要做到这一点并不容易，因为这与你此前的行事和思考方式截然不同。然而，这是一家公司能否成功的关键，正因为如此，仅仅具有聪明才智并不预示着创业必然成功。

    聪明人创业的机会成本太大

    聪明人创业的另外一个问题是，他们经常会因为选择创业而失去太多其他机会。越聪明的人，就会面临越多的选择，除非你像未开化的猿人一样不懂社交。聪明人可以在众多领域领取高薪，而且有很大的升迁机会，从而赚到更多钱。

    这意味着当你创业的时候，你将比收入更低、职业选择更少的人面临更多风险。这种情况通常被称为“黄金手铐”困境。更大的风险意味着你的商业机会必须能带来更多回报，才值得你去付出。

    如果你的年收入为250,000美元（或有机会达到这种水平），相对于年收入50，000美元的创业者，你的公司必须创造超出后者五倍以上的业绩，你才能获得相同的回报。此外，如果你的年收入为250,000美元，你很难创建一家年利润翻番的公司。而如果你的收入为50,000美元，实现这个目标则要容易得多。

    总而言之，聪明人创业的机会成本太大，他们完全可以去从事其他对智力要求更高，更错综复杂的事业。所以，如果上高中时大家一致公认“最有可能成功”的那个学生正在为一家美国公司打工，而一位不起眼的学生却成功创建了一家业绩不俗的公司，你千万不要感到意外。

    本博客改编自作者的畅销书《创业者公式》。

    This post is in partnership with Entrepreneur. The article below was originally published at Entrepreneur.com.

    One of the most counterintuitive traits that can hurt entrepreneurs is smarts. Yes, the more successful you are and the more talents you have, the harder it is to run a business.

    While you may think that being smart, motivated and talented would logically make someone the best possible candidate for entrepreneurship, unfortunately, this is often not the case.

    The ‘I’m better than everyone at every task’ challenge.

    The smart-people problem starts back in school when the dreaded “group projects” are first assigned. Knowing the 80/20 rule for work (80% of all work is done by 20% of the people), what do you think happens in every group project? The smartest and most talented people in each group decide that they are going to do the lion’s share of the work. They don’t want to risk their grade in the class by dividing the work equally and hoping that Timmy (the guy who is absent from class two days a week on average and sleeps through class on the other three days) does his part well, if he remembers to do it at all. In school, there isn’t any benefit in trying to get Timmy up to speed quickly. Forget that — the smart people just take over and do the whole project themselves.

    And thus begins the smart-people work cycle. The smartest people do just about everything better than most everyone else. They write better, plan better and reason better. They are better, until it comes to running a business. Then, they are not better; they are screwed.

    There are only 24 hours in each day and a person does need to sleep, eat, shower and do certain other things. So, each day, this smart person tries to do everything himself, because he can’t stand someone else doing a job badly. Then, he is stuck with the one-man band “job-business” and ends up not being able to grow.

    Why slackers can reign supreme as entrepreneurs.

    It is interesting, but actually, some of the slackers are better suited for entrepreneurship than the “smart” people. Why? They figured out early on to surround themselves with smart people who would do the work. They know how to delegate and sometimes, how to manipulate other people into doing things that they don’t want to do.

    You’re only as smart as you can automate.

    Ideally, smart people would just be able to convey their talents to others. But since the smart people are so used to doing everything themselves, they don’t learn the key skills for making their business successful, including automating and delegating as many tasks as possible. As a smart person, you need to use your smarts and talents to boil down their essence in an easy to follow format that anyone can replicate.

    Too smart for your own good.

    Smart and talented people also often have a flair for the unusual, complicated or different. They don’t like to follow the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid), which is required to make a business succeed.

    If you think of the assembly line in a fantastic manufacturing plant or the global presence of McDonald’s, they both seem complex, but in reality, they are a series of incredibly simple functions. Every single task is broken down into easy-to-follow steps. The assembly line worker repeatedly performs a few tasks that are specifically defined. So does the McDonald’s cook, cashier and drive-thru order taker. There is little input from these individuals, as everything has been standardized for them.

    Some of the largest, most successful businesses in the world aren’t staffed in their majority by the smartest people. They are actually staffed in large part by regular, average (and sometimes, stupid) people. These successful entities have just a few people who are smart enough to standardize, automate and delegate the majority of the tasks in a way that can’t be screwed up by their average employees.

    So, being smart or talented isn’t going to help you unless you can use those smarts to figure out a way to simplify those tasks that will make a business successful. This isn’t easy, because it goes against everything that you have ever done and is counter to how you were taught to think. However, it is necessary for a business to succeed and why smarts and talent alone don’t predict entrepreneurial success.

    Too much to lose.

    Another issue with the smart people starting businesses is that they often have the most to lose. The smarter you are — unless you have the social graces of a wild ape — the more options you have available to you. You will be able to make a lot of money in a variety of fields and have room in your career to become promoted and make even more money.

    This means that when you start a business, you have a lot more to risk than someone who makes less money and has fewer career options. This is often referred to as the “golden handcuffs” dilemma. Because you have more to risk, this means that you need to have a business opportunity that is going to provide an even bigger reward for it to be worth it to you.

    If you make $250,000 a year (or have an opportunity to do so), your business is going to have to be five times more successful than the business of someone making $50,000 a year to get the same return. Additionally, it is a lot harder to found a business that will double your yearly profit when you make $250,000 a year than it would be if you make $50,000 a year.

    So, with the most to lose, a wide range of other options available and the penchant for more intricate, complex endeavors, don’t be surprised when the person “Most Likely to Succeed” from high school ends up in corporate America and it is one of the more average students that finds success in his or her own business.

    This blog is adapted from my bestselling book, The Entrepreneur Equation.