A good discussion among the IU team was prompted by the mention of Malcolm Gladwell's latest essay for The New Yorker, "The Talent Myth".  The subtitle is "Are smart people overrated?"  Here's an excerpt:

The broader failing of McKinsey and its acolytes at Enron is their assumption that an organization's intelligence is simply a function of the intelligence of its employees. They believe in stars, because they don't believe in systems. In a way, that's understandable, because our lives are so obviously enriched by individual brilliance. Groups don't write great novels, and a committee didn't come up with the theory of relativity. But companies work by different rules. They don't just create; they execute and compete and coördinate the efforts of many different people, and the organizations that are most successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star.

Provocative reading for a place like UC Berkeley, a land of stars (i.e., the faculty) and stars in training (the students) hooked up with those who are supposed to serve the stars (i.e, the staff).

[Sidenote:  I'm an admirer of Gladwell not only because of his thought-provoking essays but because he makes them all available on his website, two months after their original publication date.]