Reminds me of Bob Sutton, a Stanford prof and author who writes[1]: "This tendency to look for individual goats – and heroes – isn’t just a problem that permea

Reminds me of Bob Sutton, a Stanford prof and author who writes[1]: "This tendency to look for individual goats – and heroes – isn’t just a problem that permeates the world of sports. It is reflected in many misguided ideologies and management practices, which focus excessive energy on hiring stars and weeding-out mediocre and poor performers, and insufficient energy on building a great system that enables most competent people to succeed. I agree – and can show you evidence – that there are huge differences in individual skill and ability in every occupation. BUT we’ve also got a lot of evidence that ordinary people can perform at top levels in a well-designed system, and even a superstar is doomed to fail in a bad system." Sutton, you know, researches these kinds of things rather than holding a blind belief that once you hire A players, your job is done. 1 - http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/crappy_people_v.html http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/crappy_people...