Members of Great Groups also need relative autonomy, a sine qua non of creativity. No Great Group was ever micromanaged.

Jack Welch once said of his role at General Electric, “Look, I only have three things to do. I have to choose the right people, allocate the right number of dollars, and transmit ideas from one division to another with the speed of light.”

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.

This book examines Great Groups systematically in the hope of finding out how their collective magic is made.

As Carville liked to say, quoting Disraeli, “A good leader knows himself and the times.”

The broader and more diverse the network, the greater the potential for a Great Group. The richer the mix of people, the more likely that new connections will be made, new ideas will emerge.

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.”

Luciano De Crescenzos observation that “we are all angels with only one wing, we can only fly while embracing each other” is just as true for the leader as for any of the others.

People are not necessarily swayed by reason. “The head has never beaten the gut in a political argument yet, and I doubt if it ever will,” Carville writes in All’s Fair.