By Christopher Murphy CHAPTER 13mind, we begin to generate ideas that are greater than the sum of their
parts. It’s simple Gestalt where 1 + 1 + 1 = 5.
In order to avoid cacophony, it helps to have a conductor to hand to or-
chestrate everything, ensuring everyone works together in harmony. Your
conductor might be a figure cast in the Steve Jobs mould, manipulating
the action according to a grand, singular vision; or they could be a low- to
mid-level team leader, or series of leaders occupying a leadership role that
passes between them, designed to encourage new reactions between your
primed brains. Think of the conductor as a catalyst, bringing disparate
elements into contact with one another and facilitating a reaction between
them to create something new.
The conductor doesn’t have to be the most senior person to hand.
Indeed, turning the organizational hierarchy upside down on occasion can
lead to radical new thinking. Put the secretaries in charge for a day and
you’ll be surprised at the wisdom they can share through their own unique
worldview (a worldview you might have forgotten in your relentless rise to
the top).
History provides many examples of great conductors, most recently
Steve Jobs at Apple (and NeXT); John Lasseter at Pixar; David Kelley at
IDEO; and many, many more. Two that bear exploring in a little more
detail, for different reasons, are Tony Fadell and Thomas Edison, known
as ‘The Podfather’ and ‘The Wizard of Menlo Park’, respectively. Both tell
us stories about the various roles the conductor can play in helping to
organize and shape teams, to extract the maximum value from the creative
spirit on hand. In Fadell’s case, we learn that sometimes the right conduc-
tor for the task at hand is an outside hire, someone beyond the existing
team. From Edison we learn that sometimes the conductor’s skill lies in
simply stepping back and acting as the guiding hand for others, getting the
right teams in place and allowing them to discover (and marvelling as you
witness, and patent, what they do).