One of my father’s friends pursued his Master’s at IISc Bangalore during the early 1980s. There, he discovered that his batchmates were the toppers from Universities of Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai – among other places.
“They used to talk Maths that I had never even heard of,” he told me.
Continuing, he said, “All those questions where there are bloody 3 boxes containing some red and white balls, and then you have to find the probability of picking a red ball – they could solve that mentally in seconds.”
Soon enough, he realized he could never be like them.
So he had two choices – either he spends the next couple of years trying to chase his peers down, get good grades, and in turn, try to become better than them – or, he can become what he now calls “an 80% guy.”
The “80% guy” philosophy stayed with him through his MBA at FMS, Delhi, and later, as an entrepreneur with a successful exit.
“I couldn’t get straight As like those guys, but I could consistently hit 80%. I wasn’t the best debater, but I was better than 80% of the room. Same with coding, sales, and marketing.”
By being 80% good at a range of valuable skills, he could connect them together in ways specialists couldn’t. And when you can bridge the gaps between disciplines, you create a skill set that is rare and uniquely valuable.
There were a lot of examples in his career where brilliant developers couldn’t understand the explicit and implicit needs of clients due to a lack of business domain knowledge.
Where analysts who could crunch numbers at lightning speed fumbled while presenting those insights in meetings.
Where someone in sales could close deals, but had little understanding of the product – so they could convince someone to buy, but couldn’t consult afterward.
Being great at one thing is powerful, but being 80% good at multiple things can make you indispensable.
You don’t always need to be the best. Sometimes, being versatile beats being elite.