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resource leverage creates competitive advantage.
What people do freely, they do without condition.
Finding someone’s native genius is a key that unlocks discretionary effort.
How do you create this cycle of growth and acceleration inside your organization?
“In what way is this person smart?”
Try supersizing someone’s job. Assess their current capabilities and then give them a challenge that is a size too big.
Is there someone on your team who needs a bigger challenge but won’t continue to grow unless you let them go?
The best team attracts the best team, and winning often leads to more winning.
EMPIRE BUILDERS bring in great talent, but they underutilize it because they hoard resources and use them only for their own gain. TALENT MAGNETS get access to the best talent because people flock to work for them, knowing they will be fully utilized and developed to be ready for the next stage.
leader’s job is to put other people onstage.
Multipliers, by contrast, liberate people from the oppressive forces within corporate hierarchy. They free people to think, to speak, and to act with reason. They create an environment where the best ideas surface and where people do their best work. They give people permission to think.
But he holds a very high bar for what you must do before you voice an opinion. You need to have the data.
“He lets us know that when decisions are collective, the mistakes are collective, too. No one person takes the blame.”
“All good ideas start as bad ideas. That’s why it takes so long.”
“You have to be smart enough to learn.”
Deru kui wa utareru, which translates as, “The stake that sticks out gets hammered down.”
Creating a clear “waterline” for your team will give them confidence to experiment and take bolder action but will signal to them to be extra diligent where the stakes are high. This distinction will also signal to you when you can stand back and when you need to jump in and rescue.
Multipliers liberate people from the intimidation of hierarchical organizations and
the domination of tyrannical leaders.
They create an environment where every brain is utilized and every voice is heard. Instead of rebellion, they create a movement.
He articulated this opportunity and laid down the challenge for the organization. He then asked each person to join him
people get smarter and stronger by being challenged.
Once a leader accepts that he or she doesn’t have to have all the answers, he or she is free to ask much bigger, more provocative, and, frankly, more interesting questions.
Multipliers: 1) seed the opportunity; 2) lay down a challenge; and 3) generate belief.
Instead they begin a process of discovery: they provide just enough information to provoke thinking and to help people discover and see the opportunity for themselves.
Show the Need One of the best ways to seed an opportunity is to allow someone else to discover it themselves. When
Multipliers create a space between what people know and what they need to know, and that draws people into the challenge.
First, they extend a clear and concrete challenge. Then
they ask the hard questions that need to be answered to achieve the challenge, but—most important—they don’t answer them. They let others fill in the blanks.
By making a challenge real, they allow others to visualize the achievement and communicate the confidence that the organization has the collective brainpower required.
Laying down a challenge means more than directing people to do it. It includes asking the hard questions that no one yet has the answers to and then backing off so that the people within the organization have the space to think through the questions, take ownership, and find the answers.
Multipliers generate belief—the belief that the impossible is actually possible.
Multipliers create genius in others because they are fundamentally curious and spark learning in those around them.
The question “why” is at the core of their thinking and takes the form of an insatiable need for deep organizational understanding.
The other leader facilitates a debate before deciding, and in
the process builds a team that can take intelligent action.
Raza, you’ve been for this idea, you now argue against it. Chris, you now argue for
it.” They would switch roles, which felt awkward for a moment or two, but soon they’d begin to pound the issues from the other vantage point.
Lutz did not leave debate to chance. He knew that while creating a debate is easy, creating a rigorous debate requires a deliberate approach.
In framing an issue, there are four parts to a well-crafted frame:
THE QUESTION: What is the decision to be made? What are we choosing between? THE WHY: Why is this an important question to answer? Why does the decision warrant collective input
debate? What happens if it is not addressed? THE WHO: Who will be involved in making the decision? Who will give input? THE HOW: How will the final decision be made? Will it be made by majority rule? Consensus? Or will you (or someone else) make the final decision after others provide input and recommendations?
Where should we cut expenses? A stronger debate
question would be: Should we cut funding for project A or project B?
Instead, they wisely give people time to prepare and assemble their thinking, knowing the extra space will serve to strengthen the thinking and remove emotion from the discussion.
He explained why this decision was vital to their ability to expand their reach and educate as many potential users as possible.
They know people will do their best thinking if the issues are framed well and
defined, and if the questions of the debate are clear.
They know what they want out of the debate and what they want out of the people involved.
A great debate is: ENGAGING: The question is compelling and important to everyone in attendance. COMPREHENSIVE: The right information is shared to generate a holistic and collective understanding of the issues at hand. FACT BASED: The debate is deeply rooted in fact, not opinion. EDUCATIONAL: People leave the debate more focused on what they learned than on who won or lost.
