Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration

Great Groups work murderous hours, often with deadlines that cause stress levels to soar. Reducing stress, rather than adding to it, is one of the functions the leader must often perform. Even during World War II, when their groups were working frantically, both Op-penheimer and Johnson insisted that their staffs take Sundays off. Great Groups work

The leaders of Great Groups love talent and know where to find it.

Great Groups also tend to be places without dress codes, set hours, or other arbitrary regulations. The freedom to work when you are moved to, wearing what you want, is one that everyone treasures. The casual dress so typical of people in extraordinary groups may be symbolic as well, a sign that they are unconventional thinkers, engaged in somethin

The ability to plan for what has not yet happened, for a future that has only been imagined, is one of the hallmarks of leadership of a Great Group,

Later, during the manufacturing phase of the project, there was a dramatic increase in foreign-object damage, or FOD. This happens when a worker accidentally leaves a screw or other object in an engine or when objects fall out of pockets and are left behind. One creative solution: workers were issued coveralls without pockets.

Time forces people, however brilliant, to taste their own mortality. In short, experience tends to make people more realistic, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

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

Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

a Disney animator recalls, “Disney had only one rule. Whatever we did had to be better than anybody else could do it.”

They see connections. Often they have specialized skills, combined with broad interests and multiple frames of reference. They tend to be deep generalists, not narrow specialists. They are not so immersed in one discipline that they can’t see solutions in another. They are problem solvers before they are computer scientists or animators. They can n