Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People
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November 2009, Volume 22, Number 11
Clever: Leading Your
Smartest, Most Creative People
How do you lead people who are highly talented, energetically
creative, exceptionally trained, mistrusting of organizational hierarchy, unreceptive
to anyone who would try to manage them, opposed to the notion that they could
possibly be led, antithetical to much of what you may think is right and true about
leadership, and quite likely the most valuable and productive employees in the
organization? If this sounds daunting, that’s because it is. At least, it is
according to Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, who, in Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People, offer guidance
based on extensive research into what they call the “clevers,” and readily
acknowledge their belief that “leading clever people is one of the greatest
challenges facing organizations today.”
As the authors explain, movement into the knowledge economy
brought with it a scramble among organizations of all kinds for the brightest,
most innovative minds—the clevers—but it turns out that those minds come with
other traits as well, characteristics that are shifting the practice of
leadership so it can both liberate and direct all that intelligent, creative
gray matter. Goffee and Jones discount the effectiveness of “people who revel
in being a leader,” pointing out that
leading clevers requires “a degree of humility that goes beyond that required
in traditional organizations” together with a “toughness” to be tapped when the
best interests of the organization are threatened. From “explain and persuade”
rather than “tell people what to do,” to “create a galaxy” rather than “recruit
a star,” Goffee and Jones list dos and don’ts for building and leading an
organization that creates an effective environment for making the best use of
the talents and gifts clevers bring.
Filled with practical strategies for leading clevers, the
book is organized into sections on clever individuals, teams, and organizations.
Readers who usually skip over the personal stories and corporate anecdotes in
leadership and management books may find themselves pausing a little longer at
the descriptions that help define and clarify clever—and that are based on the authors’ research on clevers such
as the creator of the hugely successful Sims
games, Will Wright; the Formula One auto-racing team McLaren; and technology
giants Cisco and Google. With these and other examples, the authors are entertaining
and instructive in their explanation of how, in the “clever economy,” to develop
trust, support innovation and creativity, add value to the organization and to
clevers’ lives, and otherwise lead those who think themselves unleadable.
Rob Goffee, Professor of Organizational Behavior at London
Business School, and Gareth Jones, Fellow of the Centre for Management
Development at London Business School and visiting professor at Instituto de
Empresa in Madrid, are also the authors of Why
Should Anyone Be Led by You? (Harvard Business Press, 2006). Reviewed by Cynthia Wilson.
by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones
Harvard Business Press, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4221-2296-9
