7 ms·

It's sad how this sounds so plausible and valid... because even today, we are incredibly bad at managing (or making use of or integrating into a team...) brilli

by nnq 13y ago

It's sad how this sounds so plausible and valid... because even today, we are incredibly bad at managing (or making use of or integrating into a team...) brilliant people and we fail to make use of them and we let them fail because we can only figure out how to make reliable profit by using readily available mediocrity. We should instead learn to recognize human diversity and accept that besides the "well rounded hard worker" that needs to make up at least 50% of any team, we also need to find ways of making use and helping thrive: - the always starters: the guys that always start new things and have new ideas (that actually work!) but maybe never finish anything -- maybe we should stop pressing them to finish, just rotate them from one department to another and then let the rest work to bring his works to completion - the motivation dynamites: the people whose minds go up in fire and also set fire to the minds of people around them -- maybe we should use them by rotating them to projects that lack motivation, or use them to launch viral social media campaigns or something - the distracted geniuses: the thing with the "distracted genius" is that if you teach him how to "focus", he become way more productive but stops being a genius, and you then have another a-little-above-average-chap -- maybe we should use the "ideas volcanos" as a competitive advantage and stop telling them to focus, like encourage them to publish their ideas that cannot be implemented online on a company blog - yeah, the competition will steal some of them, but your company will become uber-attractive and everyone will want to work for "a company from which so many uber-cool ideas come from" ...and then there's the generalization that most of these types of brilliant people are essentially not team players -- they shouldn't be forced to work as part of one team or stick to a team: maybe a corporate environment may just perpetually rotate them from one team/project to another, not even bothering to let them finish what they are doing; maybe a startup should stop trying to get them on-board and just keep them as well paid consultants (and allow them to consult for even a dozen other companies at the same time to keep their minds busy). ...and maybe all the ideas above are wrong, but the point is that we are incredibly bad at making use of brilliant people in business context and focusing on "just use hard working average joes" instead is an avoidance of the problem, not a solution!

echaozh 13y ago
Though I really like your idea, and think that I may fit into 1 or more categories described in your post, I don't think it is a good thing for the brilliant guy. The world only remembers the one who finishes, rather than the one who throws out an idea and then walks off. It may be easy for the brilliant guy to find excuses to not make more commitment and finish, he's just being either lazy or inconfident to implement his own idea. If he never finishes a thing, how can he know if it is good or not? how can he gather more practical experience? It may or may not be good for the employer, it is definitely bad for the employeed to indulge in not having to finish.
- nnq 13y ago
  The thing is that there's huuuuuge road between 'kind-of-working prototype' and 'something deliverable to the client'. And it takes very different kinds of people for the portions of it. A "brilliant never-finisher" is great for the idea->'kind-of-working prototype'/PoC, and yes, I think they should struggle to at least get to this, not just throw an idea. But the thing is that this is usually just 20% of the road, and they'd bee useless or even damaging for the rest of the 80%, so it's better to let them move on. And the 'damaging' part is very real (!!): someone who keeps pouring new and better ideas into a project that already has the ideas it needs to be a product is actually bringing negative value by increasing time-to-market, even if everyone only perceives the fact that the product would not even exist without him and that all his ideas are great. By letting the 'brilliant non finisher' start a new project (just give him something challenging and an almost-zero budget until he's really needed again if the company doesn't have the resources for something else), you're avoiding a potential big loss or even a catastrophic failure (imagine the competition brings something inferior to market, grabs to whole market share, and then even poaches the brilliant guys from you afterwards). The only cost to pay would be that you need to keep paying the brilliants for the rest 80% of project duration to keep them for feedback and new projects, while they climb rocks or sip cocktails and you and the rest of the team sweat your guts out (hard to swallow) OR finance some micro-pet-projects to keep their minds working (hard to support).
k__ 13y ago
> the always starters I have the feeling, that everyone who don't want to do real work, is this kind of person... There are a big bunch of people out there with ideas, but only a fraction of them will realize their ideas. This is why there are "non-technical-founders" (I have this idea, I just need someone _helping_ me to implement it) and why developers are paid so much money. Because everyone can have ideas, but not everyone can make them work.
- jotm 13y ago
  On the other hand, technical founders can make the idea work, but can't get people to use it, which makes it just as worthless (with a lot of wasted time and added stress, to boot). An "ideas guy" who can actually sell those ideas is pretty valuable.
  - bigtunacan 13y ago
    That is not an "ideas guy"; that is a "sales person". And a strong sales person is essential and actually adds value. While some technical founders can also be great sales people; it is uncommon so this is a good pairing. When people say "ideas guy", at least in my local techno-sphere, it means the person that has "some great idea", but no skills to implement, no skills to sell it, and no money to back it. We get "idea guys" at our tech meetups on a somewhat regular basis. They just show up one day, and it's always the same thing, "So I have this great idea to do X, but I don't know how to program. I don't have any money to pay anyone, but I'll give you a 10% equity to build my idea. Huh?, no no I don't have any existing customer relationships either. Now which one of you can get this done the fastest?" On the other hand we have people that fit into one of the 3 necessary/valuable categories (Implementers/Sellers/Financial Backers). People in all 3 of these categories have ideas and add real value.
jib 13y ago
A lot of people want to be "the idea guy", because it's cool and relatively easy. The problem is that ideas are cheap. The value of any given idea is really low - I would argue that for many organisations ideas even have a negative value on average, because you are going to spend a lot of time dealing with the idea without it actually becoming something that generate value in the end. Even if you have an idea, that works, and that will generate significant value if realised, until that idea IS realised, it is a negative cost. People who can generate a large amount of those ideas are a commodity. People who can cheaply identify an idea that can be realised and that have access to resources to realise it, and that can go through the process of actually realising the idea are not a commodity. The bottle neck for putting new ideas to market is not the idea generation, and so the people who consider themselves "always starters" is not a scarce resource, hence I dont need to rotate them from department to department - every department I have already have access to more than enough good ideas, so adding the "always starter" to that department would be a negative cost.
- felix_xyk 13y ago
  "The idea guy" is not brilliant guy. From my understanding, the brilliant guy should clearly know when, what ,how to do the correct thing. The "correct" thing is which may suit for current business demand or for future business requirement.
- dhimes 13y ago
  The value of any given idea is really low I would agree if you mean average idea. Really great ideas are rare, difficult, and can change the world. The people who come up with those are rather special. And, unfortunately, rare, and almost never (in my somewhat limited experience) think of themselves as 'idea guys.' But this hivemind (nicely crurated by VCs- think that through) that ideas are worthless is very wrong. Unfortunately, discussions about it tend to start conflating ideas and execution- as, indeed, it is hard to separate them when you get down to it.
  - mattlutze 13y ago
    Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world. The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.
netcan 13y ago
These things might be backed into the social systems they exist in and therefore very hard to engineer.
watwut 13y ago
I love starting phase of a new projects too. However, I believe that working only on starting phase of many projects would be detrimental for the person. Later phases of the projects often gives you feedback on how well you have done in the beginning. If you participate only on beginning (design mostly), you will miss that feedback and you will not even know it. What looks like great clever idea in the beginning sometimes turns out to be too difficult to maintain down the road. The new technology or approach that speeds you up so incredibly during first weeks can became huge drag withing few months. Smart clever hacks so cool first six weeks can make the system extremely fragile twelve months later. Your projects rotating starter never involved in later phases of the projects may become problem on himself. Second argument is about fairness. Finishers are not people who love to do all that less exciting work needed to actually finish the thing. Neither are they too stupid to work on design phase. Most often, they are people who feel responsibility towards project completion. If you do not allow them to work on those interesting parts too and force them to fix other peoples bugs all the time, they are likely to leave for another company.
espeed 13y ago
See this Charlie Rose interview with Jim Collins on his new book, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck -- Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, where Jim talks about what it takes for a genius/artist to thrive (http://www.hulu.com/watch/298461 http://www.hulu.com/watch/298461). Maybe these "always starters" and "distracted geniuses" are in search for truth and purity -- for meaning -- and are continuously iterating on and refining their value system in such a way that their values change between the time they start exploring an idea until the time they understand the idea. Or maybe their values don't change during the process, but once they fully understand the idea they were exploring, they find it's not valuable enough for them to commit more time to, even though others might find it valuable. Jim's research reveals that the big things happen at the rare cross between creativity and discipline. It's the genius/artist who when they see and set their hands on the big thing, they grab it by the throat and don't let go. Maybe the path to this intersection of creativity and discipline is for the genius/artist to first focus on peeling back the layers within themselves -- to spend time contemplating until they find their core values -- to "know thyself" -- and then once they have gotten to the root, they'll have the clarity of purpose needed to align their core values with their work and will be able to pursue their life's purpose without being distracted by frivolous matters.
- contulluipeste 13y ago
  Your second paragraph said it. The brilliant men don't slave for others, they have their own thing to find or follow.
wcummings 13y ago
Prototyping and R&D seems to be a great place for these people. Build MVP, start to build things up on the business end, show its potential, hand off to engineering and let them productionize it. "Idea men" have to at least bring their ideas to the point of implementation. Alternatively, working on tooling, libraries, tricky bug fixes and other odds and ends may be good projects for the inattentive.
vog 13y ago
> even today, we are incredibly bad at managing [...] brilliant people That is an important question, and unfortunately, I haven't seen lots of books on that topic. Except maybe "Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers" by J. Hank Rainwater: http://books.google.de/books/about/Herding_Cats.html?id=9xFPAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y http://books.google.de/books/about/Herding_Cats.html?id=9xFP... (This is not so much about "brilliant" people, but about creative people - especially good programmers - in general.)

by nnq 13y ago

echaozh 13y ago

Though I really like your idea, and think that I may fit into 1 or more categories described in your post, I don't think it is a good thing for the brilliant guy. The world only remembers the one who finishes, rather than the one who throws out an idea and then walks off. It may be easy for the brilliant guy to find excuses to not make more commitment and finish, he's just being either lazy or inconfident to implement his own idea. If he never finishes a thing, how can he know if it is good or not? how can he gather more practical experience? It may or may not be good for the employer, it is definitely bad for the employeed to indulge in not having to finish.

nnq 13y ago
The thing is that there's huuuuuge road between 'kind-of-working prototype' and 'something deliverable to the client'. And it takes very different kinds of people for the portions of it. A "brilliant never-finisher" is great for the idea->'kind-of-working prototype'/PoC, and yes, I think they should struggle to at least get to this, not just throw an idea. But the thing is that this is usually just 20% of the road, and they'd bee useless or even damaging for the rest of the 80%, so it's better to let them move on. And the 'damaging' part is very real (!!): someone who keeps pouring new and better ideas into a project that already has the ideas it needs to be a product is actually bringing negative value by increasing time-to-market, even if everyone only perceives the fact that the product would not even exist without him and that all his ideas are great. By letting the 'brilliant non finisher' start a new project (just give him something challenging and an almost-zero budget until he's really needed again if the company doesn't have the resources for something else), you're avoiding a potential big loss or even a catastrophic failure (imagine the competition brings something inferior to market, grabs to whole market share, and then even poaches the brilliant guys from you afterwards). The only cost to pay would be that you need to keep paying the brilliants for the rest 80% of project duration to keep them for feedback and new projects, while they climb rocks or sip cocktails and you and the rest of the team sweat your guts out (hard to swallow) OR finance some micro-pet-projects to keep their minds working (hard to support).

k__ 13y ago

> the always starters I have the feeling, that everyone who don't want to do real work, is this kind of person... There are a big bunch of people out there with ideas, but only a fraction of them will realize their ideas. This is why there are "non-technical-founders" (I have this idea, I just need someone _helping_ me to implement it) and why developers are paid so much money. Because everyone can have ideas, but not everyone can make them work.

jotm 13y ago
On the other hand, technical founders can make the idea work, but can't get people to use it, which makes it just as worthless (with a lot of wasted time and added stress, to boot). An "ideas guy" who can actually sell those ideas is pretty valuable.
- bigtunacan 13y ago
  That is not an "ideas guy"; that is a "sales person". And a strong sales person is essential and actually adds value. While some technical founders can also be great sales people; it is uncommon so this is a good pairing. When people say "ideas guy", at least in my local techno-sphere, it means the person that has "some great idea", but no skills to implement, no skills to sell it, and no money to back it. We get "idea guys" at our tech meetups on a somewhat regular basis. They just show up one day, and it's always the same thing, "So I have this great idea to do X, but I don't know how to program. I don't have any money to pay anyone, but I'll give you a 10% equity to build my idea. Huh?, no no I don't have any existing customer relationships either. Now which one of you can get this done the fastest?" On the other hand we have people that fit into one of the 3 necessary/valuable categories (Implementers/Sellers/Financial Backers). People in all 3 of these categories have ideas and add real value.

jib 13y ago

A lot of people want to be "the idea guy", because it's cool and relatively easy. The problem is that ideas are cheap. The value of any given idea is really low - I would argue that for many organisations ideas even have a negative value on average, because you are going to spend a lot of time dealing with the idea without it actually becoming something that generate value in the end. Even if you have an idea, that works, and that will generate significant value if realised, until that idea IS realised, it is a negative cost. People who can generate a large amount of those ideas are a commodity. People who can cheaply identify an idea that can be realised and that have access to resources to realise it, and that can go through the process of actually realising the idea are not a commodity. The bottle neck for putting new ideas to market is not the idea generation, and so the people who consider themselves "always starters" is not a scarce resource, hence I dont need to rotate them from department to department - every department I have already have access to more than enough good ideas, so adding the "always starter" to that department would be a negative cost.

felix_xyk 13y ago
"The idea guy" is not brilliant guy. From my understanding, the brilliant guy should clearly know when, what ,how to do the correct thing. The "correct" thing is which may suit for current business demand or for future business requirement.
dhimes 13y ago
The value of any given idea is really low I would agree if you mean average idea. Really great ideas are rare, difficult, and can change the world. The people who come up with those are rather special. And, unfortunately, rare, and almost never (in my somewhat limited experience) think of themselves as 'idea guys.' But this hivemind (nicely crurated by VCs- think that through) that ideas are worthless is very wrong. Unfortunately, discussions about it tend to start conflating ideas and execution- as, indeed, it is hard to separate them when you get down to it.
- mattlutze 13y ago
  Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world. The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.

netcan 13y ago

These things might be backed into the social systems they exist in and therefore very hard to engineer.

watwut 13y ago

I love starting phase of a new projects too. However, I believe that working only on starting phase of many projects would be detrimental for the person. Later phases of the projects often gives you feedback on how well you have done in the beginning. If you participate only on beginning (design mostly), you will miss that feedback and you will not even know it. What looks like great clever idea in the beginning sometimes turns out to be too difficult to maintain down the road. The new technology or approach that speeds you up so incredibly during first weeks can became huge drag withing few months. Smart clever hacks so cool first six weeks can make the system extremely fragile twelve months later. Your projects rotating starter never involved in later phases of the projects may become problem on himself. Second argument is about fairness. Finishers are not people who love to do all that less exciting work needed to actually finish the thing. Neither are they too stupid to work on design phase. Most often, they are people who feel responsibility towards project completion. If you do not allow them to work on those interesting parts too and force them to fix other peoples bugs all the time, they are likely to leave for another company.

espeed 13y ago

See this Charlie Rose interview with Jim Collins on his new book, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck -- Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, where Jim talks about what it takes for a genius/artist to thrive (http://www.hulu.com/watch/298461 http://www.hulu.com/watch/298461). Maybe these "always starters" and "distracted geniuses" are in search for truth and purity -- for meaning -- and are continuously iterating on and refining their value system in such a way that their values change between the time they start exploring an idea until the time they understand the idea. Or maybe their values don't change during the process, but once they fully understand the idea they were exploring, they find it's not valuable enough for them to commit more time to, even though others might find it valuable. Jim's research reveals that the big things happen at the rare cross between creativity and discipline. It's the genius/artist who when they see and set their hands on the big thing, they grab it by the throat and don't let go. Maybe the path to this intersection of creativity and discipline is for the genius/artist to first focus on peeling back the layers within themselves -- to spend time contemplating until they find their core values -- to "know thyself" -- and then once they have gotten to the root, they'll have the clarity of purpose needed to align their core values with their work and will be able to pursue their life's purpose without being distracted by frivolous matters.

contulluipeste 13y ago
Your second paragraph said it. The brilliant men don't slave for others, they have their own thing to find or follow.

wcummings 13y ago

Prototyping and R&D seems to be a great place for these people. Build MVP, start to build things up on the business end, show its potential, hand off to engineering and let them productionize it. "Idea men" have to at least bring their ideas to the point of implementation. Alternatively, working on tooling, libraries, tricky bug fixes and other odds and ends may be good projects for the inattentive.

vog 13y ago

> even today, we are incredibly bad at managing [...] brilliant people That is an important question, and unfortunately, I haven't seen lots of books on that topic. Except maybe "Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers" by J. Hank Rainwater: http://books.google.de/books/about/Herding_Cats.html?id=9xFPAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y http://books.google.de/books/about/Herding_Cats.html?id=9xFP... (This is not so much about "brilliant" people, but about creative people - especially good programmers - in general.)