Why Smart People Need to Learn

In many organizations smart people find it difficult to learn or contribute to learning.

This is usually caused by a culture that does natural selection, where people who seem not to have answers are instantly seen as less intelligent.

Intelligence is good, but the winning formula in the information age is a first class temperament and the ability to discard your previous assumptions.

Performance metrics that use intelligence must be reviewed to ensure that intelligence becomes more useful.

People then assume that their performance metric is being intelligent. Ideally, in a world where there is so much information available to your competition, "sharing" should be the major performance metric.

A sharing organization is a learning organization. A learning organization must also be a doing organization. But you must learn before you do.

At Google people who keep knowledge to themselves and try to gain personal advantage are called "knaves". While people who challenge the status quo with facts and share knowledge are called knights. It is better to be a knight.

Smart people who refuse to accept they are wrong also do so because they are probably the highest paid in the room. Organizations must design to ensure that leaders get challenged without their authority or self respect getting hampered.

Smart leaders or people must be told that leadership and the ability to carry people along using facts and vision is more important than being correct.

Organizations should create rooms for learning and not intellectual or individual haggling.

Knowledge and learning must flow from the strategic management and mid management level all the way to the operational and support services level.

Smart people need to be part of the organizational organism and not outsiders or colonialists who only want to win arguments for personal advantage.

The most important values for employees are humility, sharing, environmental awareness, feedback and communication., simplicity and beauty in presentations, a bias for action and ability to tolerate stress.

These qualities define Smart in the fourth industrial revolution.

They also help to create learning and agile organizations.

Let your smart people know thing have changed and that they need to open up. The world is open, closed people can't receive much and they can't offer enough value.