“The smartest people in your organization can’t help if you keep sidelining them”

22 May 2025 Reading Time: 4 minutes

“Intelligent people, when assembled into an organization, will tend toward collective stupidity.”—Dr. Karl Albrecht

 That zinger from Dr. Karl Albrecht recently stopped me in my tracks. Not because it was shocking—because it was familiar.

Albrecht calls it the organizational smart gap: the space between the brainpower you have and the brainpower you actually use. Once you notice it, you see it everywhere. Especially in internal communication.

I’ve lost count of how many smart, strategic communication professionals I’ve seen hired for their insight…only to be buried in inbox requests, tasked with formatting slide decks, and reduced to subject line whisperers. Treated like a human help desk instead of the strategic partners they are.

It’s not just frustrating. It’s wasteful. And it’s not just a communication issue. It’s institutional self-sabotage.

The Consultant Paradox

There’s a strange disconnect at play in many organizations. An employee’s insight is ignored… until a consultant repeats it. Then suddenly, it’s a breakthrough.

One speaker I met at a conference recently shared that her husband left an in-house role to join a consultancy. Two days in, he was briefing senior execs—at the same company that barely gave him the time of day when he worked there. Same person. New business card. Triple the credibility.

Funny how that works.

The implicit message? Strategic thinking isn’t valuable unless it comes from the outside. This mindset reinforces the smart gap by undervaluing the insight that’s already in the room.

Designed Stupidity

Albrecht outlines two types of collective stupidity:

• Learned stupidity—When people aren’t empowered to think, or don’t believe they’re allowed to
• Designed-in stupidity—When systems and structures actively prevent creative or independent thought (hello, micromanagement)

I’ve seen both firsthand.

At one past employer, leadership turned over like clockwork every 18–24 months. With every new regime came a new “vision,” usually followed by a round of layoffs. One CEO lasted 10 months—just long enough to eliminate most of the Learning & Development team. The next CEO? Flagged training as a critical gap and scrambled to rehire for the same roles.This rinse-and-repeat cycle created a workplace powered by chaos and guided by survival instincts. Strategy didn’t stand a chance.

Albrecht calls this entropy—the internal tax of wasted intelligence. I didn’t need a calculator to measure it. You could feel the loss in every ignored idea, every meeting where the real expertise was sitting quietly in the back row.

When I shared insights drawn from both company experience and proven practice, my supervisor would thank me, pause—then do the opposite. Colleagues noticed it too. One said, “It’s like we’re being paid to do, not to think.”

Sound familiar?

How to Close the Smart Gap

Albrecht offers two broad recommendations:

• Make better use of the intelligence already inside the organization
• Create the conditions for that intelligence to thrive

Simple in theory. Harder in practice. Especially if the culture is wired for hierarchy over insight.

So what can leaders of internal communication teams do?

Start by treating comms pros like the strategists you hired—not production assistants with a knack for grammar. Internal communication teams have insight into employee sentiment, cross-functional alignment, change readiness, and message resonance. When you reduce them to distribution channels, you miss the signal for the noise.

Here are a few traits from Albrecht’s model of the intelligent organization, translated for internal comms leaders:

• Share the vision.
  Your comms team can’t align messaging to strategy if they’re left out of the strategic conversations. Bring them in early and often.
• Foster shared fate.
  If employees don’t see how their work connects to the bigger picture, they’ll stop trying to steer the ship and just try not to fall off it. Create a culture of “we,” not “watch your back.”
• Make it safe to challenge.
  Complacency is the enemy of progress. Smart teams ask hard questions. Let them.
• Earn hearts, not just hands.
  Discretionary effort comes from emotional buy-in. When employees believe in the mission, they go the extra mile—and bring others with them.
• Set boundaries and build bridges.
  Clear swim lanes help with focus, but true collaboration happens when knowledge flows across functions. That includes listening to insights from HR, marketing, IT—wherever good ideas live.
• Support knowledge-sharing.
  Hoarding information is a trust issue in disguise. Build systems and habits that promote openness.
• Define meaningful performance.
  Internal comms success shouldn’t be measured in emails sent. Define outcomes, not just outputs—and give your team the autonomy to reach them.

Let Smart People Be Smart

The smartest people in your organization can’t help you if you keep sidelining them. The smart gap isn’t about hiring better talent. It’s about trusting the talent you have and creating the right ecosystem for them to thrive. 

So the next time you wonder why your comms strategy isn’t landing, ask yourself: Are you actually using the intelligence on your own team?

Or are you paying someone else to repeat what your employees have been saying all along?

Because no organization should settle for collective stupidity. Especially not when the answers are already in the room.

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Emily Hecker is a US-based internal communication strategist, author, and certified Communication Management Professional (CMP®) with over a decade of experience transforming communication strategies.

Through her coaching and consulting work, she partners with organizations across industries—including publishing, financial services, insurance, retail, and facilities management—to foster connected, engaged, and motivated workplaces. As the author of “Me, Myself, and IC: A Guide to Building Internal Communication as a Team of One,” Emily also empowers solo communication professionals to build strong foundations for success.

Written by: Editor