Several years ago, a wise colleague wrote a wonderfully contrarian column arguing that no organisation should hire more than a few very clever people. Sure, they’re great with facts, abstract ideas and vigorous debate. But put too many of them in a room together, and they can gum up the system with their love of complexity and conflict.
As we “knowledge workers” know, clever people aren’t always the most collaborative. And what they have in brainpower, they often lack in empathy. We live, after all, in a cognitive meritocracy in which IQ is valued much more highly than EQ (emotional intelligence) or most physical abilities. Those who want to succeed are incentivised to use their head — neither hearts nor hands get quite as much exercise.
We are all the poorer for it, according to political analyst David Goodhart, whose new book Head, Hand, Heart looks at how and why “smart people have become too powerful”. It’s one of a number of new works that circle around the topic of meritocracy, and how it has created a dangerously unbalanced world by rewarding a small sliver of brain workers so disproportionately.
