IQ is not the same as motivation. A very smart per...

IQ is not the same as motivation. A very smart person may have no interest in money or status. In fact, many of the trappings of success, or the steps needed to acquire them, may not be mentally engaging enough for highly intelligent people to pursue them.

In the military, where the path to success is a lot more clear than in other professions, the connection between IQ and promotion isn't a clear one-to-one relationship. Officers are smarter than the average enlisted person, but not by a huge margin. I've heard people in uniform speculate that, for the promotion track, it's important to be smart enough to meet the requirements, but not so smart that many aspects of the job become insufferably dull.