Executive Lunch for 'Clever People' with Professor Gareth Jones – Summary

On Monday 18th January IEDP.info and Harvard Business Publishing hosted an executive lunch in London for 40 senior learning and development managers and directors from major organisations. Lunch was followed by an hour and a half presentation and discussion with Gareth Jones, Fellow of the Centre for Management Development at London Business School and visiting professor at Instituto de Empresa (IE).

The afternoon allowed senior practitioners responsible for leadership and capability development  to network and share ideas, experiences and best practices and then hear Gareth’s highly engaging and stimulating ideas on leading and managing “clever people”.

Jones, with his colleague Professor Rob Goffee, have written a ground-breaking study of how organisations need to evolve to accommodate their most talented and revenue-enhancing people: “Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People”.  The central theme of their study is that these clever people are frequently more valuable to the organisation than the organisation is to them (they can easily move to another).  As such it is in the organisations’ best interests to accommodate these clever people. This leadership issue is made more challenging by the fact that “clevers” often do not respond to normal incentives, rules and behavioural norms  - indeed they frequently are deeply contrarian in their behaviour.

In discussion with the audience Gareth Jones explored varying practices and strategies that leaders can develop to help manage these vital employees. Following Gareth’s presentation IEDP.info’s Steve Mostyn facilitated an open discussion with the audience and a panel of Jones and Beth Aldington, Leadership and Development Director at Blackrock Asset Management and Justin Dunn, Head of Group Learning and Development at RSA Insurance Group.

The discussion allowed the executives present to air some of the challenges they had encountered with clever individuals in their organisation and share the solutions they had adopted – or seek advice from Gareth Jones and others who had been in similar situations. The afternoon closed with a further opportunity for delegates to speak to Gareth Jones and network with each other.

Delegates included: