What’s The Most Valuable Lesson You’ve Learned In Your Professional Life?

I love Quora and could probably post a question a week from their awesome weekly e-digest where they summarize some of the most active posts from the Topics you subscribe to.  For example, this week, they had a question and answers on “What is the Most Valuable Lesson You’ve Learned In Your Professional Life?”

Here’s one sample answer:

The fundamental difference between smart people and wise people. Smart people reach answers fast without much consideration of alternatives, and who have amazing ability to justify anything, using their big brains.  Wise people who know they are often wrong, and so can admit and learn from their mistakes, take more time to make decisions when it is not an emergency, and generally come to better solutions if they are not working. Think of the difference between oh so smart Henry Kissinger and Cho En Lai who ran rings around him when Nixon went to China for example, or in business between the ever self justifying Alan Greenspan and Alan Mullaly who actually turned round Boeing and Ford. It is better to be wise than smart. Of course the wise people also have learned the sort of lessons Edmond Lau has posted, who sounds wise and I would only add admit and learn from mistakes as a specific tool to combine with his list

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