clever people

Effective leadership in innovative organisations – some insights

By Elisabeth Goodman, 24th January 2019 Harvard Business Review has come up with another insightful article on what makes for effective leadership. This time, Gary P. Pisano shines a light on what leaders can do to channel potentially chaotic creative talent into cost-effective and productive behaviours and outcomes. (The Hard Truth about Innovative Cultures, HBR …

Effective leadership in innovative organisations – some insights Read More »

“Topgrading”: it’s possible to be talented AND be an effective team player

‘Topgrading’ by Bradford D Smart1, is a wonderful testament to the existence of talented individuals who can also ‘work smarter’, ‘deliver higher quality work’, ‘demonstrate greater team work’, and ‘find ways to get the job done in less time and with less cost’.  Smart argues that it’s the proportion of ‘A’ players in an organisation …

“Topgrading”: it’s possible to be talented AND be an effective team player Read More »

Achieving more value with less

As Stephen R. Covey, Bob Whitman and Breck England point out, in their one-hundred-and-ten page “Predictable results in unpredictable times”1: “in bad times, the distractions are more severe than ever… As people get laid off, the survivors have more to do.  The distractions pile up to the sky as the economy grows rougher…” In our …

Achieving more value with less Read More »

Why conventional knowledge management, process improvement and project management won’t work with ‘clever’ teams. Or will they?

‘Simply putting clever people together does not make a team’, and, ‘There are many examples of extremely bright and talented groups that signally underperform’.  So say Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones in ‘Clever. Leading your smartest, most creative people.’ (1) This book, which Elisabeth Goodman, principal consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, picked up as a result …

Why conventional knowledge management, process improvement and project management won’t work with ‘clever’ teams. Or will they? Read More »