For want of me the world’s course will not fail;
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great, and shall prevail
Last week, we heard from Gareth Jones about how to lead clever people. He ran Human Resources in both the BBC and Polygram, where clever stars need the organization to achieve their goals but are quite capable of avoiding the authority of anyone who tries to manage them. He started out in research in University of East Anglia, and now works in London Business School.
His message was simple "Be yourself more, with skill". Clever workers need to believe their leader, so role playing and facades just weaken their contribution. Their leaders need skill to both show strength, but also reveal weaknesses where they need their team to help. His best analogy was that of the parent who both genuinely cares about their childs' development yet knows how to achieve distance when discipline is needed.
Gareth talked to two different groups that day. In the afternoon, he worked with a small group of 12 CEOs and Division Heads in a peer-group learning session of the Cambridge Leaders Academy. In the evening he addressed a much larger group of 240+ academics and business people from a very wide range of local organizations including Abcam, Addenbrookes, ARM, Aveva, CSR, Hays, Microsoft, Medical Research Council, Mills & Reeve, Nokia, Qualcomm, Philips, Red Gate, TTP, and Xaar. It was good to see that so many of our members care about improving the way they lead. I was very happy that the clever people I lead in our team had managed to get the word out to so many great organizations.
As Gareth told us, 7 out of 10 new jobs that will be created in the UK will be in the "clever" economy. We are lucky in Cambridge to have such clever skilled people - and lucky that our leaders want to raise their game together.
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