I was asked a funny question this week – “Who’s the smartest person you’ve ever worked with?”
I had to pause.
We’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of smart people – still do – and I wouldn’t have a clue how to rank them.
Is it one of the brilliant scientists, one of a set of amazing investment bankers, a lawyer who has successfully led across four completely different industries, one of the amazing academics who ‘wrote the book’, a writer who has a turn of phrase to say three pages in two lines, a neurodivergent leader who took every problem from an angle no one had considered (and therefore opening up amazingly different solutions), or simply that unassuming accountant who seems to pop up and ‘fix’ badly broken companies by applying integrity, simplicity and honesty?
I’m not sure. All are amazing. So, what is the criterion?
What are the criterion for smartest?
The traditional criterion for smartest is ‘most qualifications’ or ‘highest grades’, but that gives a huge advantage to people born of privilege and with time on their hands. After all, plenty of very clever people don’t go on to post-graduate study at university, or go to university at all, because they’re busy doing other things.
We could go to ‘most successful’ but we’ll end up down a rabbit hole of ‘what is success’?
Is it financial? And if it is, is it financial for self, or financial for others or organisations or even charities?
Is it impact? And then on who, and for what reason? Do you need to impact the whole world, or just the part you’re focused on? Is it a grand impact and highly visible, or just an everyday impact on the work you choose to apply your cleverness to?
Is it happiness and balancing work and life and family and friends?
Clearly ‘criteria’ are elusive, or at best, completely subjective.
Are street smarts more important than book?
Yes. And no.
In short order, the best have both.
You need the quals to get the job to get the opportunity. The opportunity is the experience. And, as Albert Einstein said ‘The only source of knowledge is experience’.
There’s also a cute quote (from that source ‘unknown’) that goes “A child educated only at school is an uneducated child”.
And then we can add Dolly Parton’s famous “They say somebody’s street smart, but I feel like if I got intelligence, it’s just a country smart”. By any measure, Dolly is a great example of ‘smart’ wrapped up in charm, fun, and an awful lot of hard work.
So, what do ‘smart’ people have in common?
This one is simple.
What does smart look like? It looks like constantly getting smarter.
And that’s what all the ‘smartest people in the room’ we work with have in common.
They’re plenty smart enough already, but they have no interest in talking about that.
There’s zero name or qualification dropping. There’s no talk of ‘great work they’ve done in the past’.
Instead, they’re asking a gazillion questions.
They’re seeking new perspectives, drawing from the very different experiences of others, and looking around for what they don’t know or haven’t thought of yet.
They’ve got an edge, and its edge that means they’re constantly getting smarter. Taking on new ideas, new ways, and better possibilities.
As Woodrow Wilson said “I not only have all the brains I have, but all that I can borrow”. That’s smart.
And finally:
I decided, in the answer to the original question, there’s no right answer, but there are two things that really inspire me:
First a quote from an absolutely brilliant paediatric neurologist in the USA. In a conversation about smarts, he said “You know Rhonda, I estimate we understand about 8% of the human brain right now, but I expect as we learn more, it might be a lot less than 8%”
And there you have it. You’re only as smart as your context and moment in time. A link in a chain of knowledge and experience that will change and improve long after you.
Second a quote from Socrates
“I know that I am intelligent, but I know that I know nothing”.
And that is exactly how every smart person we work with thinks.
Calm and confident in what they know, but assuming they know nothing, and only wanting to learn more.
So, spotting the smartest person in the room?
It will be the person asking all the questions. Getting smarter.
