Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration

Walt’s job was curatorial, to recognize excellent work. As Hollister puts it, “Walt has no musical training and perfect musical appreciation.” Disney evidenced a characteristic common among stewards of Great Groups. He didn’t micro-manage. He intervened after the experts on his staff had solved most of their own problems, not while they were strugg

The leaders of Great Groups give them what they need and free them from the rest.

Successful groups reflect the leader’s profound, not necessarily conscious, understanding of what brilliant people want. Most of all, they want a worthy challenge, a task that allows them to explore the whole continent of their talent. They want colleagues who stimulate and challenge them and whom they can admire. What they don’t want are trivial d

Great Groups have some odd things in common. For example, they tend to do their brilliant work in spartan, even shabby, surroundings.

Emerson’s observation that “almost all people descend to meet.”

Thus the weekly meeting served as a simple but remarkably efficient structure for exposing everyone to information that might prove key somewhere down the line.

Bethe, whom Oppenheimer chose over Teller to head the Theoretical Division of the lab, was equally effusive in Oppenheimer’s praise. “He understood immediately when he heard anything, and fitted it into the general scheme of things and drew the right conclusions,” Bethe told Rhodes. “There was just nobody else in that laboratory who came even close

One thing Great Groups do need is protection. Great Groups do things that haven’t been done before. Most corporations and other traditional organizations say they want innovation, but they reflexively shun the untried. Most would rather repeat a past success than gamble on a new idea. Because Great Groups break new ground, they are more susceptible

The zeal with which people in Great Groups work is directly related to how effectively the leader articulates the vision that unites them.