“You create a campaign culture,”

People who are trying to change the world need to be isolated from it, free from its distractions, but still able to tap its resources.

Many projects never transcend mediocrity because their leaders suffer from the Hollywood syndrome. This is the arrogant and misguided belief that power is more important than talent. It is the too common view that everyone should be so grateful for a role in a picture or any other job that he or she should be willing to do whatever is asked, even

Americans don’t like people claiming credit for other people’s work. It violates their sense of fair play. And so Walt Disney was more or less forced to come up with a satisfactory explanation of exactly what he did at the company that bore his name. The Disney version of the truth, the one that the studio would turn to again and again, was the bee

The scientists could move from one project to another, which meant, member Chuck Thacker recalled, the best projects attracted the best people and “as a result, quality work flourished, less interesting work tended to wither.”

Roland Joffe’s 1989 film on the Manhattan Project, Fat Man and Little Boy.

Skunk Works creator Kelly Johnson was a visionary on at least two fronts—designing airplanes and organizing genius. Johnson seemed to know intuitively what talented people needed to do their best work, how to motivate them, and how to make sure that the desired product was created as quickly and as cheaply as possible. In time, Johnson wrote down

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

People in Great Groups have blinders on.