ARE YOU EFFECTIVELY LEADING YOUR CLEVER PEOPLE?

Information technology is one industry where competitive advantage is often found in the ideas and intellectual know-how of creative people. In a Harvard Business Review report on how to manage the talented, the research finds that the psychological relationship leaders have with what we call “clever people” is different from the relationship they have with other follower types.

 

We all know of famous clever people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sam Walton and Warren Buffet. Clever people, however, are all around us when we start looking with new eyes. There’s the software developer we know and the manager who works with her who develop a new piece of software and their single innovation creates jobs for about 100 more people. Or the three person project team that solves a complex challenge for 100,000 dollars  and saves its client 3 million dollars while putting them first to market--which was the case when Software Consortium helped a regional bank launch a new online service.

Companies who seek this kind of competitive advantage have multiple choices: they can use professional services firms, like advertising, technology, accounting, to contract with clever people in these companies for short or long term needs, or they can try to harvest their own internal talent. Or they can take a combination of both approaches.

In the second and third approaches, the company not only has to attract that type of talent, but then the leader must foster an environment in which the clever people are inspired to achieve their fullest potential for the company. To foster that kind of performance, leaders first need to understand characteristics that most clever people share, which collectively can make them a challenging group to manage in traditional environments that are governed by legal human resources guidelines. The environments, by their nature, restrict the ability of the manager to enable the most creative to be successful. 

To understand how this works in today’s workforce, Harvard Business Review researchers spoke to more than 100 leaders and their clever people at leading organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Electronic Arts, Cisco Systems, Credit Suisse, Novartis, KPMG, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), WPP and Roche. Through these interviews some common themes emerged.

The research found that clever people want a high degree of organizational protection and recognition that their ideas are important. They also demand the freedom to explore and fail. They expect their leaders to be intellectually on their plane—but they do not want a leader’s talent and skills to outshine their own. That’s not to say that all clever people are alike, or that they follow a single path. They often, however, share a number of defining characteristics.

Eight things to know about most clever people, according to Harvard:

1. First and foremost, they do not like to be led.  This can present difficulty for the leader. The challenge has only become greater with globalization, as clever people are more mobile than ever before and are as likely to find opportunity in Bahrain or Buffalo as Baltimore.
2. They know their worth, and they expect you to know it too. You can’t transfer the knowledge without the people.
3. They are organizationally savvy. Clever people will find the company context in which their interests will be most generously funded.
4. They ignore corporate hierarchy. Many are scornful of the language of hierarchy and are quick to recognize insincerity and respond badly to it.
5. They expect instant access. If clever people don’t get access to top leaders, they may think the organization does not take their work seriously.
6. They are well connected. Clever people are usually plugged in to highly developed knowledge networks: Who they know is often as important as what they know.
7. They have a low boredom threshold. In this era of employee mobility, if you don’t engage clever people intellectually and inspire them with organizational purpose, they might walk out the door or produce the minimum possible.
8. They won’t thank you. Even when you are leading them well, clever people may be unwilling to recognize your leadership. Remember these creative individuals feel they don’t need to be led. Measure your success by your ability to remain on the fringes of their radar.

These characteristics can become less challenging to your leadership when using high caliber professional consultants. When you are hiring your clever people as consultants, you should expect professionals with greater technical expertise--be it legal, marketing, accounting or technology--as well as strong soft skills such as management expertise, emotional intelligence, team building. True professional consultants are conditioned, like athletes, to be star performers regardless of your organizational culture.

Fostering cleverness in your organization
When you want to provide the fertile ground for clever people and their ideas to flourish, consider your company culture. Given the mind-set, clever people may see an organization’s administration machinery as a distraction from their key value-adding activities. Leaders are advised to look at when they can provide protection, or lessen the administrative “rain”, for these people by creating an atmosphere in which rules and norms are simple and universally accepted, rather than overly bureaucratic. Representative rules are the ones that clever people respond to best, and would include risk rules in banks, sabbatical rules in academic institutions, and integrity rules in professional services firms.

Savvy leaders take steps to streamline rules and to promote a culture that values simplicity. A well-known example is Herb Kelleher, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, who threw the company’s rule book out the window. Another is Greg Dyke who, when he was the director general of the BBC discovered a mass of bureaucratic rules, often contradictory, which produced an infuriating organizational immobilization. Dyke launched an irreverent “cut the crap” program, liberating creative energy while exposing those who had been blaming the rules for their own inadequacies. He creatively engaged employees in the campaign—for example, suggesting that they pull out a yellow card (used to caution players in soccer games) whenever they encountered a dysfunctional rule.

Early on, Janet Amirault and the leaders at Software Consortium understood the importance of representative rules and the value of inspiring clever people with organizational purpose. She and the leadership team have developed an empowering culture in the company, which embodies four core principles: a culture of excellence for the power to strengthen business; passion for caring; mutual respect; mutual trust. In making this culture real and integral to the daily practice of consultants and leadership team, they have created a beacon that attracts clever people. Software Consortium shares their best practices at their seminars and in their consulting engagements, from a desire for everyone to have an environment of success and fun.

As many leaders of extremely smart and highly creative people have learned, you need to be a benevolent guardian rather than a traditional boss. You need to create a safe environment for your clever employees; encourage them to experiment and play and even fail; and quietly demonstrate your expertise and authority all the while. You may sometimes begrudge the time you have to devote to managing them, but if you learn how to protect them while giving them the space they need to be productive, the reward of watching your clever people flourish and your organization accomplish its mission will make the effort worthwhile.

 

Contact Software Consortium or call 1-877-850-9393 to discuss how to leverage our top-level talent to empower your business.

 

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