Some people are very smart, without being particularly shrewd.
We have several shorthand ways to communicate a facility for book-smarts.
- “They graduated from Stanford”
- “He is moderating a panel on biodiversity”
- “She’s an OB-GYN with a Masters in Public Health”
These are credentials, and highly respectable ones.
Street-smarts are much harder to communicate on the page.
- “They always find a good discount”
- “He knows how to navigate the politics here”
- “She’s charming”
In Scott Berkun’s post comparing street-smarts to book-smarts he notes:
To be street smart means you have situational awareness. You can assess the environment you are in, who is in it, and what the available angles are.
Sounds to me like context matters–to be street smart is to adjust yourself to the environment. And context matters when we describe those street smarts on paper.
The current, conventional wisdom for communicating street-smarts is that you should apply a measurement, so instead of “he always finds a discount,” you could say, “he reduced spending in his division by 35% over an 18 month period.” You need to frame those street-smarts with some context.
Here’s the proud mom test–it’s easy to imagine a mom saying, “My daughter is a thoracic surgeon!” Even if we aren’t quite sure what “thoracic” means, we all know “surgeon” and we get the shorthand–smart, accomplished, successful.
I suppose an equally proud mom could say, “My son reorganized the municipal fleet so that they needed three fewer vehicles to accomplish the same number of trips, thereby saving over $85,000 in a…” most listeners have tuned out by this point, perhaps retaining, “Her son works on cars.”
Is there a fix for this?