Smart People

Hank Gerber writes to The Cube . . .

Smart people are great people to work around.

It's awful fun to watch smart people strut their stuff.

'Never liked school much, the formal learning thing, so it's a gas to have an unintentional "teacher" to watch and learn from.

Best experience recently: Sitting in on a phone conference while two different lawyers argued - one pro, one con - about some IP the company owned. Their arguments were cogent, pointed and logical. I'm not a lawyer, nor an expert in intellectual property, and I could follow what they were saying, where they were leading. Then, at one point, they switched sides: not as an intellectual game, but with each one playing Devil's Advocate to his own arguments.

'Love that kind of casual intelligence: the Accountant who knows her numbers - not like a geek or a bean counter, but with a functioning comprehension of the underlying theory of organization; the Marketing Manager who understands the human psyche and its relationship to the Company's product - and how no advertising word should be just "there" as filler; the Veep with the elephant memory remembering the reason behind institutional decisions made fifteen years earlier, and prepared to learn from past mistakes - even from new people; the Board Director with the years in venture capital, sharing a doctoral level of experience and insight in a review of what was supposed to be a simple "leave behind" white paper.

Casual intelligence - not show-off. Smart people, not those who end an argument with the meant-to-impress "I know better than anyone else in this room."

That Engineer with the eye of an artist and the mind of Leonardo. The Manager with the accomplishments of Patton and the style of Mother Teresa. The Receptionist who can make everyone feel at home and in a serious place of business at the same time. The Operator who knows the machine like a cowboy knows his horse, responds to pressure like a Zen samurai, and can fix the Line problem with a minute's thought and a moment's right action.

Smart people are sure worth being around.