Talents are not always good at communication. A bright manager would recognize and work with talents. When the management fails to recognize talents, talents are sometimes labelled as "difficult people". Mediocre managers tend to get rid of "difficult people". By doing so, those managers will fail their organizations. They sad thing is: they typically will not understand why they have failed.
A competent employee who is good at politics and good at interpersonal relations are likely to be promoted. So they have no problem implementing their bright ideas. When an organization has managers like this, it thrives.
There are competent employees who are direct. They may not have patience to explain to their managers proposals that the organization may profit from. Sometimes they do not know how to convey their ideas to their managers (because insightful ideas are not always easy to explain). But sometimes their bosses do not have the patience to listen. Sometimes, they (rightly or wrongly) do not believe that their managers would understand. These talents could still be able to implement their ideas diligently if their managers trust them.
When a manager is bright, talented but imperfect employees could still be valuable to the organization. Bright managers would recognize talents. They will patiently extract ideas from talents. They would reward talents, to encourage them to continue to contribute to the organization. Bright ideas would improve the organization's competitiveness.
There are management who cannot recognize talents. Incompetent managers typically lack confidence. They lack trust in their subordinates, so they are often afraid of criticism. They either have no patience to listen, or do not have the ability to understand insightful ideas. They often label talents who do not support their ideas as "difficult people". They will try to get rid of "difficult people".
Eventually, they would lose all the talents who could innovated for them. They do not mind though, as power is the only important thing to them. As long as they have power, they do not mind the organization losing talents or failing. If they have charisma, they could still have competent subordinates in their team. But if they don't, then by getting rid of "difficult people", they are more likely to be surrounded by subordinates who are not motivated to innovate.
Explaining innovations to a mediocre boss is costly. It is risky too, as implementing good ideas does not guarantee success. On the other hand, not having good ideas in an organization almost guarantees failure. Everything being equal, a organization led by a mediocre manager who gets rid of all the talents around him will not be as competitive as other organizations that use every talent available (i.e. do not get rid of "difficult people"). Such organizations would typically fail. Unfortunately, mediocre managers would typically not understand they themselves are the cause of failure.
[End]
Related: