At times, we tend to give a lot of importance to intelligence and Ivy League degrees. Surely, Intelligence is an important virtue and must be respected but it is not sure shot key to success in career. I would like to share my experience to illustrate the point.

Earlier in my career when I was a team lead, our team was assigned product development work. The team comprised of young and smart engineers from various colleges and one IIT graduate.

‘Rajat’ was quite an intelligent guy but was irregular in delivery. He would give good suggestions and solutions but would always overrun delivery dates thus delaying the output of whole team.

As his delivery delays were impacting entire project, I thought to change his work. Since he was good in problem solving, I started using him as a technical architect for solution design. While assigning work, I would ask him to estimate completion date and sync it with our committed project schedule.

Here also, same problem resurfaced. He started delaying design documents.  After few months, I had to reduce the team size due to budget cuts and no points for guessing whom i released from the team.

Sure, if there was no budget constraint I would have liked to work on Rajat’s development for more time but at that moment, it would have been unfair to let go of other team members who were giving their 100%.

This incident has few important lessons which can be helpful in your career 

• A sharp analytical mind is not enough, it is important to pair it with commitment towards work
• Education from a reputed institute is good; however make sure to guard against any complacency.
• An employee with average intelligence but with dedication to complete work on time and with desired output can be more valuable than more gifted colleague 
• Reliability is what earns you professional respect. By keeping your word you earn trust of stakeholders in your capabilities and they would be more than happy to give more responsibility