Find Hidden Genius
As a leader, your job is to find genius nobody else sees. So says Stanford / Andreessen Horowitz / Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan. I love that way of thinking about my job, so made a list of 21 “hidden geniuses” on my team. But how can I help?
To develop genius, Balaji suggests you help geniuses develop polymathic skills. Hamburg philosopher Von Wowern defined polymathy as "knowledge ranging freely through all disciplines." That is, complement a genius with skills they don’t have:
Show tech stars with a knack for business how venture capital works.
Teach an empathetic salesperson how to be more consultative.
Help a great data scientist learn how to lead.
This, I believe is Bill Belichick’s superpower. The legendary football coach has had 13 of his coaching assistants become head coaches. He transfers his polymathic knowledge of football to understudies: he teaches great assistant coaches the areas of the game they don’t know.
Part of developing genius is to let people move on from your company. Balaji recommends helping mentees become more marketable by giving them a critical mission to fulfill, and promoting their achievements, and letting them leave your company when it makes sense.
Reed Hoffman’s Tour of Duty encourages up-and-out career evolution. A Tour of Duty gives rising stars a big, visible job: build and launch a new product; re-engineer an existing business process; introduce an organizational innovation. These are projects that get noticed and sometimes will spur a great talent to leave. That’s OK! Leaders encourage growth over selfish interests.
I’m creating Tour of Duty plans in 2021. Check in next year to see how we did!
Footnote (1): You may argue about the success of Josh MacDaniel, Brian Flores, Mike Vrabel. You may argue Nick Saban doesn’t count. Handling the press is a bit of a joke, but here’s genius in how he handles the press. It’s a fun debate!
