Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy and Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid are stuck at the top of a high clump of rocks. The summit was too steep for their horses, so now it’s just the two of them. They’ve spent days running from a posse and now they either have to turn back and face the lawmen or jump from their perch into the twisting, violent rapids far, far below.
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In the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, a princess avoids losing her baby by saying the secret name of an evil creature who would otherwise collect the child as payback for the spinning of straw into gold. When the princess speaks his name, Rumpelstiltskin disappears never to be heard from again. The story was published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, but like most Grimm fairy tales, its origins are much older. (Part of the legend of Saint Olaf, who lived a thousand years before the Grimms wrote their first book, involves the discovery of a troll’s true name.) Gaining power by knowing a demon’s real name has come up in movies (The Exorcist) and is relevant to the workplace as well.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with really smart, talented people over the years, so you’d think my exposure to mediocrity (other than my own) would be rather limited. But it turns out that staffing with mediocre professionals is just one way to produce lukewarm work. Here are three other heavily trafficked roads to hell:
If you’re in a room full of 20 people arguing about what shade of blue to use, at least you know what your biggest problem is. To get the most out of your organization, expertise needs to be protected throughout the development process. I like to use a sliding scale of expertise to do that.
There’s nothing wrong with talking about things in a general way. There’s nothing wrong with expecting specific things from other people. There’s everything wrong with doing both at the same time.