A simple definition of business is this: the exchange of goods and services in return for money between people. Even simpler, business is other people's money.

Business schools teach goods and services, and numbers and finances, but they don't teach the one thing you must master to do well in business: People.

How to talk to people. How to build and cultivate relationships. How to get antagonistic people on your side in a negotiation. How to make a sale without being too sales-ey.

All of these are much harder to learn and master than products and widgets. But all school teaches you are the products and widgets and the science behind them.

Anyone can learn a science with enough study. People skills are an art.

People skills are not something you can memorize and color-by-numbers if-this-then-that solve. It comes not as much through practice as it is experience and feel. You only get good at it by being bad, messing up, and suffering failures -- three things that people actively avoid.


And the reason most people lack the ability.