This function is never more vital than when an elite group is doing something unprecedented and thus by its very nature is threatening to people who are more comfortable with what has been than with what might be.

One vital function of the leaders of Great Groups is to keep the stress in check. Innovative places are exhilarating, but they are also incubators for massive coronar-ies. Sundays off helped at Los Alamos and the Skunk Works.

Efficiency is, in fact, not a word much used by the groups in this book. Driven by a belief in their mission, unconcerned by working hours or working conditions, these groups aim to make a difference, not to make money. Could efficiency, productivity, and the desire for immediate pay-offs occasionally be road blocks on the way to greatness?

Who succeeds in forming and leading a Great Group? He or she is almost always a pragmatic dreamer. They are people who get things done, but they are people with immortal longings. Often, they are scientifically minded people with poetry in their souls, people like Oppenheimer, who turned to the Bhagavad Gita to express his ambivalence about the ato

Great Groups ship.

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

Headed by thirty-three-year-old Johnson, that original Lockheed Skonk Works set out to design the first U.S. jet fighter in 180 days. Working furiously against its deadline, the group managed to produce a prototype of the P-80 Shooting Star with 37 days to spare. World War II ended before the plane could be produced in large numbers, but the P-80 w

Great Groups don’t just talk about things (although they often do that at considerable length). They make things—amazing, original things, such as a plane that a bat can’t find.

Among Kelly Johnson’s strengths was a sure grasp of what mattered to his people and what didn’t. Most of them were engineers and tinkerers who hated paperwork, which he cut to an absolute minimum.