Originally published by Whitney Johnson on LinkedIn: High IQ, High EQ: There's a Niche for Every Single One of You
How the Irish Dairy-Farm-Boy Saved Civilization.
I’m toying with that as a possible title for my Disrupt Yourself Podcast conversation with Walter O’Brien.
Skeptics and critics may quibble over O’Brien’s claims, but the fact remains that he has a top-shelf intellect, a larger-than-life personality and has built a global problem-solving business, Scorpion Computer Services that is the stuff of legend and television programming (check out Scorpion, the TV series). If his company isn’t actually saving civilization, it probably could. He immigrated to the United States on an E11 Visa, a type reserved for people with ‘extraordinary abilities’ and/or one who is considered a national asset.
Now he has a spin-off business, ConciergeUp that will put the great brains to work for you, whatever your problem may be. He's dubbed it "rent-a-brain." (Which I put to work on the podcast).
O’Brien is remarkably candid about the downside of being a genius. “I was a weird kid. I didn’t fit in at home; I didn’t fit in at school.” I’m sure we’ve all encountered this child at least once, during our own school years; marginalized at our children’s schools.
Joining a gifted society, getting involved and then trained with computers, competing and hacking—all of these provided an outlet for an exceptionally smart misfit. He garnered a couple of degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science and then started his business—all while in his teen.
Of lessons learned he says, “I thought having a company full of geniuses was a good idea....I started realizing there was a thing called EQ—emotional intelligence—common sense, social skills, and that often the higher the IQ the lower the EQ. I think Carnegie Mellon had a report that said 85% of your success is your EQ; 15% is your IQ...so I needed to go get some of this EQ."
“Here I am running a business where my guys are good, we’re technically correct, and we’re better, faster, cheaper than the competition. But that doesn’t matter; we’ve gotten beaten out by the friendly guy who’s the used car salesman, who’s playing golf with the CEO. We’ll lose our contract to him every time and I can’t ignore that problem.”
O’Brien’s solution? Hire a bunch of other people with high EQ to babysit his geniuses and navigate the treacherous communication chasm that often loomed between them and potential customers. He calls these employees super nannies.
I advocate playing to our strengths as an important career strategy and an accelerant of the personal disruptions that can catapult us to the places we dream of being. But rarely do I see a business that is as completely dependent on this principle as those operated by Walter O’Brien.