There is only a correlation of about 30% between IQ and capability (in RO terms). So there will be a number of people who are highly intelligent but are not as able to cope with complexity and uncertainty. The few members of Mensa that I have met belong to this category.

I don’t think you will find it is absolutely necessary to be one level higher in capability than the individual you are pitching the product to. Naturally, those whose CPC resides within the abstract world may wish to delve into the theoretical postulations behind stratified systems theory however the concrete elements all reside within the context of capable managers applying requisite managerial practices. This is the real meat and potatoes of the system and this is what nurtures an engaged workforce applying its individual and collective capability.

The brilliance of Jaques is that he has observed the underlying theory and then elevated it to a level of simplicity in respect of how organizations should be organized and what managerial practices should be applied in order to gain maximum benefit. The real challenge is it all requires a behavioral change by management and as we all know behaviors are not necessarily so easily modified.

Next, it takes a certain amount of capability to be able to learn this stuff and a particular set of skills to be effective to passing it on to others. While the concepts at a base level are easy to understand, when we get to engaging with our target clients, there are a couple of things at play. First, context is best provided by someone one level higher that the person getting the information. In our client world, that means that we are usually dealing with Stratum 4, 5 or 6 level executives. It’s hard to have a person capable at those levels at a really young age (although by no means impossible), and if they are, there is credibility gap with the senior level executives that we commonly need to get our sponsorship from. A certain amount of ‘grey hair’ if you will is expected in consulting. An element of ‘Been there, done that’ seems to be expected.

So, are we a dying breed? No our ‘Next Generation’ is out there today. They are the young, high potentials that we are all working with inside our clients and they are driving transformation and being successful using Requisite Organization as a key component. Some will have the values and desire to work as consultants transforming systems from the outside. Others will remain powerful agents for change and transformation inside organizations for decades to come.

I should also add that Mark Van Clieaf has made the point about CEOs not doing the right level of work before in several places, including Ivey Business Journal. Not sure if I said that.

I’ve found snark to work better than honey

You did a great job of going beyond a facile rant about the incompetence of most executives by providing lots of concrete details regarding what executives ought to be doing to generate value.

In high school I had the privilege of attending some leadership conferences. One of the rules of these conferences was that if you criticize an idea put forward by someone else you need to be ready to offer up an alternative. I think you’ve done just that with this post. The York Region Presidents’ Council would be proud!

MENSA is usually the “merely” gifted. The “profoundly gifted” would far exceed MENSA’s standards. So they tend to be very different groups, with very different feels to them.

Of the many “profoundly gifted” (IQ > 170 or so) kids I’ve known, I can’t recall any who went on to be successful in any endeavor. The various folks I know who made their millions were more normally “gifted”.

The problem with really high mode people (to use the Jaquesian nomenclature) is that there really isn’t anyone who can manage them. They open their mouths and start talking about things that the manager simply does not see because they lie so far outside his own personal time horizon. If you are working at Str2 and start trying to explain why the group needs to manage strategic uncertainty, you’te not going to go anywhere. That leaves limited real employment opportunities. And frankly, a manager would be crazy to hire someone whose time horizon so much longer than his own. You’d be even crazier to hire someone whose time horizon exceeds that necessary to run the business. Most communities, especially in America, can’t handle them either.

Were they just normally gifted, you’d be entirely correct. Companies would be well off to just hire them and figure out what to do with them later.

On communication: It of course means different things to different people. Per Dr. Kinston:

“Communication is crucial: but

it is about persuading and handling people for a pragmatist;
it is a formalized process through team briefings for a structuralist;
it is sounding out and consulting for a dialecticist;
it means explaining, listening and ensuring mutual understanding for a rationalist;
it is about using a common language for the systemicist;
it is a matter of sharing and exchanging data for the empiricist;
it is about empathy and sensitivity for the imaginist.”

Perhaps “persuade” and “influence” are better words here. The high moder can’t communicate his ideas because he’s trying to shove a two meter board into a half meter box. In the end, the recipients’ time horizon limitations will prevent them from fully seeing the high moder’s meaning. However, if they start from there, that no one is going to understand them at work, they can use language and communications to manipulate and influence.

I find that this takes a particular set of personality traits to pull off. Most high moders I work with are pretty good communicators — they have had to be in order to survive at all. They figure out ways to communicate their high stratum thinking to people. The problem is one of The Prophets: you are telling people something that they don’t want to hear.

So they kill you. Or drive you from out of their midst and into the wilderness.

It is hard to look at someone like Jeremiah and not see him as an extraordinary communicator. It’s just that no one wants to hear it. Billy Olsen was a very clear communicator, too. He was just someone who thought that military brass should be doing their jobs. Which got him stripped of rank.

I usually advise high moders to learn manipulation and influence techniques, and to dispense with communication attempts. They aren’t going to understand you anyway, so why try and just tick them off? Better to manipulate your boss into giving you things. This is a traditional engineer’s approach, too, so it’s got some legs.

You definitely bring up a good point. Many of my friends growing up were bored in school, and grades suffered as such. They started new industries and had very successful corporate exits when they started companies. Many of those same people were fabulously gifted at work, yet they were seen as threats to the B and C level leaders (or maybe that’s just a moniker for low mode). Yes, there is a problem, but there are a few potential solutions.

First, good communication skills trump most skills in life. If a “profoundly gifted” individual learns how to communicate well, he or she can then fit in better and get their ideas across in a way that fits their environments. On the flip side, without good communication skills, the most brilliant ideas will be passed over. It is, after all, the responsibility of the communicator to assure the point is received, not the listener. Taught how to present ideas, for example, one could learn the strategy and art of positing an idea and allowing someone else to feel it was theirs – all for contributing and benefiting the organization rather than the person. Studying communication, persuasion, and some politics (unfortunately) may be necessary to move ahead in normal organizations.

Another way to help these “profoundly gifted” people is to be intentional about hiring them when found, even if a role isn’t already available. What they can do for an organization will quickly outweigh their cost – if a competent and capable manager is working with them. The key there is that the manager has to be highly gifted as well (and preferably one step above). This is a great place for a skunk works, where innovation is required and playing with ideas is allowed, but normal bureaucracy is dismissed.

Does MENSA have a way of getting people together to form companies? (and does MENSA membership equate to high mode?) Are there other networks of Mode VII and VIII individuals that can choose to dominate a market through shear capability and out-thinking competitors? As Jim Collins said, great companies are often formed by getting great people on the bus, and THEN figuring out where to take the bus.

As I have worked with Glenn, Michelle, and others at http://PeopleFit.com, I have been amazed at their insight and hope to not make the mistakes of undervaluing people with higher capability than myself just because they could be threats. Heck, let ‘em run the company if they can do it better than me, and I’ll watch as my company’s value skyrockets.

Thanks for thinking out loud.

Most RO consultants are really ill-equipped to work with high-mode individuals except as vendors to them. The Requisite Organization formulation is ill-equipped, too. It wasn’t intended to work with individuals but with organizations, although Jaques was a psychoanalyst as were many of his co-workers in the project (or psychologists). He does touch on some of these issues in “Death and the Midlife Crisis”, which you can find partially in Google Books.

However, I’ve found that RO/SST is very useful for understanding and framing the issues because it provides differentiaters between different levels of potential or capacity. Jaques’s and Cason’s defining of the levels of thinking (off earlier work by John Isaac, if I recall right) supplies many of the missing points I’ve found in the “gifted” literature, as does Jaques & Co.’s work at Glacier creating progression charts, work levels and curves. It gave us what seems to be a superior way of thinking about this issue.

Still, there is much in the gifted literature that is solid and useful. “Solid” meaning that it can be replicated and tested.

Also, thanks for mentioning Kuiper. I’ve not heard of him and that got me looking at my Dutch again. (Although some of his slang passes me by.) gave me some great ideas for what I’m preparing for the new year.

Have you read Ferenc Visky’s little book? He was a co-prisoner with Richard Wurmbrand, if you know that name. You can get a taste of what he is like from a brief exceprt from a talk he gave: “Snakes and Scorpions” (In that blog, he is “FV”.)

And most importantly. As an image bearer of my Creator I am no mere actor in my own tragedy, but have a role to participate in that is uniquely mine. Whether this plays out good or not so good has a lot to do with perspective. And perception.

As always, thank you so much for your work!