Of all the facile, empty management sayings ever uttered, that’s my favorite: don’t work harder, work smarter.

A colleague in an overworked newsroom once heard that line and muttered “great, now they’re asking me to alter my DNA, too?”

Nick Kristof’s column in today’s New York Times actually describes a context in which that saying really means something.

Kristof’s subject is a great example of the optimism we should share in addressing world poverty. Because the media spends so much time reporting new and developing examples of impoverishment, there is little reported about the astonishingly effective strategies available to eradicate it. (One of my favorites addresses the plight of children who can’t attend school because they must spend the day collecting water for their families: build wells at schools so that the children can incorporate learning with getting water.)

Kristof cites a report in The Lancet, a British medical journal, that “Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of preventable mental impairment worldwide.” This simple, common supplement to salt could increase IQs around the world about one billion points, he estimates.

A panel of the world’s top economists describes micro-nutrient projects such as iodized salt supplements for pregnant women, are the most cost-effective tools available for fighting entrenched poverty, Kristof reports.

It’s a typically fascinating and uplifting Kristof column (his genius is not simply reporting horrors, but intimating hope that they can be ended if only more people would act.)

Read his column here (requires registration but it’s free and provides access to what is hands-down the best newspaper website in the world (though this one is a close second).