I’m catching back up on a number of articles I tagged to come back through. Today’s is from Seth Godin on the mythical 10x marketer. Basically, there are people that deliver 10x the value than others would in the same position. If you are forcing people to play by a set of rules and telling them how to do their job then they cannot be better than someone else. Scripted positions have some degree of better/worse performance but you can’t hit 10x deltas.
If you want to unleash someone’s potential you have to allow them to break some rules and do things their way. Being different than others is the only way to stand out. But being different leads to lots of discomfort. As a manager/project lead, what level of discomfort can you tolerate in order to have an opportunity for something amazing to be created?
Taking it from the other side, how much are you letting your own discomfort with change and rule breaking limit the people working around you?