Read Online Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman, Greg McKeown - Free Book Online
Authors: Liz Wiseman, Greg McKeown
Tags: Business & Economics, Management
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lets them access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection. His business strategy was to break down walls in the computing world. He called the company G.ho.st for Global Hosted Operating System, because ghosts can go through walls.
Zvi took a similar approach to finding the talent he needed to build his company. Headquartered in Modiin, Israel, Zvi could have easily built the company with the abundant supply of technical and business talent in Israel. But he could see a rich supply of technically savvy talent in Palestine that became isolated by failed peace agreements. Zvi convinced his venture partner, Benchmark Capital, to make a risky move and support him in building a company that spanned the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
The Palestinian office in Ramallah, West Bank, houses about thirty-five software developers and is responsible for most of the research and programming. The Israeli team is smaller and works about thirteen miles away in the Israeli town of Modiin. The team works through video conferencing. When face-to-face meetings are necessary, colleagues gather at a run-down coffee shop on a desert road near Jericho, frequented by camels and Bedouin shepherds. 3
This Talent Magnet not only looked beyond the fabricated borders of organizational structure to find the best talent to staff his company. The boundaries he broke through, borders steeped in cultural, political and physical conflict, were patrolled by armed guards.
Talent Magnets look for talent everywhere and then study that talent to uncover and unlock the real genius that lies within.
II. Find People’s Native Genius
As the head of a global function inside a multinational corporation, I spent a lot of time in cross-functional meetings and on task forces. Itwas almost inevitable that at some point in these meetings, when things would become murky, someone would hand me the whiteboard pen, point to the front of the room, and say, “Liz, lead us through this.” I’d readily jump in and do my thing, and hand back the pen at some point. After a while, I started to wonder why I almost never got to be a regular meeting attendee and sit in the back of the room and check e-mail. I thought, Why do I always get asked to lead these difficult meetings? Why am I always getting put in charge when it isn’t even my job? After seeing this pattern repeated over many years at work and in other group settings, I realized that I wasn’t being asked to be in charge per se—it was a very particular type of “in charge.” I would find myself in charge when a group needed more of a facilitative leader and less of a boss. I vividly remember one of my colleagues trying to explain to me why I was always getting asked to lead these types of meetings. Ben explained, “It is because you can so easily frame the issue, synthesize what people are saying, and lay out a course of action.” What? I stared at him blankly, trying to decipher what he was saying. It sounded like he was telling me that I was good at breathing. It didn’t strike me as a particularly big deal or something someone might find difficult. It was as easy as breathing; at least it was for me. What my colleagues were teaching me was that I had a native ability—something that I did both easily and freely.
Look for What Is Native
Talent Magnets know how to uncover and access the native genius of others. By “native genius” I mean something even more specific than a strength or a skill that might be highly rated on a 360 degree leadership assessment. A native genius is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition).
What people do easily, they do without conscious effort. They do it better than anything else they do, but they don’t need to apply extraordinary effort to the task. They get results that are head-and-shoulders above others but they do it without breaking
Zvi took a similar approach to finding the talent he needed to build his company. Headquartered in Modiin, Israel, Zvi could have easily built the company with the abundant supply of technical and business talent in Israel. But he could see a rich supply of technically savvy talent in Palestine that became isolated by failed peace agreements. Zvi convinced his venture partner, Benchmark Capital, to make a risky move and support him in building a company that spanned the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
The Palestinian office in Ramallah, West Bank, houses about thirty-five software developers and is responsible for most of the research and programming. The Israeli team is smaller and works about thirteen miles away in the Israeli town of Modiin. The team works through video conferencing. When face-to-face meetings are necessary, colleagues gather at a run-down coffee shop on a desert road near Jericho, frequented by camels and Bedouin shepherds. 3
This Talent Magnet not only looked beyond the fabricated borders of organizational structure to find the best talent to staff his company. The boundaries he broke through, borders steeped in cultural, political and physical conflict, were patrolled by armed guards.
Talent Magnets look for talent everywhere and then study that talent to uncover and unlock the real genius that lies within.
II. Find People’s Native Genius
As the head of a global function inside a multinational corporation, I spent a lot of time in cross-functional meetings and on task forces. Itwas almost inevitable that at some point in these meetings, when things would become murky, someone would hand me the whiteboard pen, point to the front of the room, and say, “Liz, lead us through this.” I’d readily jump in and do my thing, and hand back the pen at some point. After a while, I started to wonder why I almost never got to be a regular meeting attendee and sit in the back of the room and check e-mail. I thought, Why do I always get asked to lead these difficult meetings? Why am I always getting put in charge when it isn’t even my job? After seeing this pattern repeated over many years at work and in other group settings, I realized that I wasn’t being asked to be in charge per se—it was a very particular type of “in charge.” I would find myself in charge when a group needed more of a facilitative leader and less of a boss. I vividly remember one of my colleagues trying to explain to me why I was always getting asked to lead these types of meetings. Ben explained, “It is because you can so easily frame the issue, synthesize what people are saying, and lay out a course of action.” What? I stared at him blankly, trying to decipher what he was saying. It sounded like he was telling me that I was good at breathing. It didn’t strike me as a particularly big deal or something someone might find difficult. It was as easy as breathing; at least it was for me. What my colleagues were teaching me was that I had a native ability—something that I did both easily and freely.
Look for What Is Native
Talent Magnets know how to uncover and access the native genius of others. By “native genius” I mean something even more specific than a strength or a skill that might be highly rated on a 360 degree leadership assessment. A native genius is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition).
What people do easily, they do without conscious effort. They do it better than anything else they do, but they don’t need to apply extraordinary effort to the task. They get results that are head-and-shoulders above others but they do it without breaking
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