How to be the smartest person in the room

I’ve always wanted to be too smart for my own good. Regrettably, I usually have the opposite problem.

Especially when the subject is investing.

Correspondent Scott Winger suggests that as problems go, this isn’t much of one (the failing to be too smart for one’s own good part, that is, not the investing part). He and I have both seen very smart people fall into the trap of what I’ll call here intellect-induced ignorance (III, pronounced, Cockney-fashion, “Oy, oy, oy”). It’s what happens when genuinely smart people conclude the ideas of anyone who isn’t as smart as they are (often this means everyone else on earth) aren’t worth their attention.

The subject isn’t emotional intelligence. People who lack that can’t effectively work with other people — a related but different affliction. People with III don’t listen because they just don’t see the point. (A conundrum: If they’re right, they’re making a good decision. If they’re wrong it’s self-fulfilling prophesy.)

Which brings up a related tendency. It’s the intellectual version of a well-known tendency among male, muscularly-advanced high-school students: Looking at their social world as a pecking order, within which they seek their level — preferably, someplace near the top — but through intellectual rather than physical pushing and shoving. Since we’re acronymizing behavioral traits, we’ll call this one Social Cognition-driven Hierarchy Level Establishment and Positioning (SCHLEP).

If your goal is to run an effective IT organization, SCHLEPping and III create challenges at a few different levels, the result of IT professionals being as prone to III and SCHLEPping as any other collection of very smart men and women.

And they do tend to be brighter than average. They have to be to learn the trade.

Here’s one challenge: You yourself might be a SCHLEPper, and prone to III too. You wouldn’t be the first IT leader to figure you have to be the smartest person in the organization, and that your job is to explain, not to listen to the explanations of others.

To paint you a picture of what this can look like: We were asked to participate in an internal pre-review of a systems high availability and recoverability plan produced by another consulting firm. Attending were the CEO, CIO, COO (to whom the CIO reported) and Director of IT Operations. The CEO presented his concerns. The COO did his best to explain how the plan addressed them. Not to be outdone, the CIO provided a more in-depth view of the situation.

The CEO asked a number of insightful questions; the COO and CIO arm-wrestled for air time to provide the most useful answers.

By the time all this was finished, we had perhaps ten minutes left in the meeting, at which point the CEO asked if we had any concerns about the plan. “Only one,” I answered. “The person in this room who is best-qualified to comment on the plan hasn’t said anything yet.”

At which point the Director of Operations brought the most important issues to our attention.

Failing to listen to the experts you were smart enough to hire is the first pitfall you face if you’re a III-afflicted SCHLEPper.

Unless it’s the second, the first being a failure to hire experts in the first place, so as to avoid jeopardizing your SCHLEP.

Here’s one more: Because you SCHLEP, you’re in an awkward position if someone lower down in your organization SCHLEPs better than you do.

Escaping this madness isn’t difficult. Make it clear to the SCHLEPpers who work in your organization, early and often, that they’re paid to be smarter than you in their specialties. You’re paid (in part) to be able to put it all together — to understand what everyone tells you and turn it into a complete picture. Don’t compete.

Start down this path and you’ll discover something wonderful: Many people who are far less intelligent than you know something important you’d be wise to learn. It has to be this way, because no matter how smart you think you are, and how little sleep you think you need, you have only 168 hours in a week to add to your fund of knowledge. Line up nine decently smart employees who each spend 20 hours a week learning more about their professions, and every week one of them will know something you don’t.

Which leads to this conclusion: If you want to be too smart for your own good, the best way to get there is to choose your sources of ideas and information wisely, but also numerously.

Most people know something you’d benefit from hearing. You just have to help them figure out what it is.