"Among the most damning facts about Enron, in the end, was something its managers were proudest of. They had what, in McKinsey terminology, is called an "open market" for hiring. In the open-market system"

Perhaps I missed this in the scandal, but I thought the most damming facts about Enron were wholesale accounting & auditing fraud with participation from Anderson. How does 'hiring smart people' explain the fact that their auditors conspired to commit fraud? If Anderson also heavily engaged in this HR practice Gladwell may have a point. But it's still heavily anecdotal. Like most business analysis it's backward looking instead of making predictions based on the theory and reporting the results.

Also, the article seems to conflate having an MBA with being smart. I wonder if Gladwell has ever thought that the reason Southwest has a vastly more efficient organization than its competitors is because it has a bunch of smart people who figure out how to do things more efficiently. People so smart in fact that they realize people on the ground can make much more informed decisions than people in a boardroom. An MBA is not a proxy for being smart, an MBA is a proxy for doing well in school. Unfortunately, school has almost nothing to do with the real world.

When I think about 'smart' people, I don't think about IQ or degrees. I think about people I've seen do the 'impossible'. A 'smart' person for customer service might be someone who is very friendly and personable. A 'smart' person for engineering may not be very personable at all but can come up with a working design in days instead of months.