Organization Trumps Ability

It is observable that organization prevails more often than individual ability.

I have seen individuals of great ability outdistanced by organizations of less skilled people.

If one wishes to maximize the benefit of skill and ability, then it must be supported by an outfit that can take care of the mundane, the unpleasant, and the necessary. To do otherwise forces the individual to DoItAll himself.

Organizations have persistence beyond individual involvement.

The point is this: it is a mistake to believe that individual skill, ability, and brilliance are enough to compete with organized, though mediocre, effort.

I'm sure we can all think of examples -- take LinusTorvalds -- individually brilliant, he nonetheless created a loose organization which has accomplished far more than he, himself, could have.

If you have a great idea, resist the temptation to DoItAll yourself. You may be an expert promoter, bookkeeper, lawyer, recruiter, programmer, and quality assurance dude, but unless you also have a special arrangement with SpaceTime, you're not going to be able to compete in the long run.

Get organized, one way or another.

-- GarryHamilton

On the flip side, it is observable that a talented individual can often outperform even a large organization that is working inefficiently. Without care and feeding, organizations tend to fall into low energy states --- amorphous blobs of ineffective busywork. The best of both worlds is to have a small group of very talented people actually working well together. This hardly ever happens, but most real advances are made by this sort of group. A close second is a small team of average talents, with one or two better people if you can have them, actually working together. Large groups are almost always a bad idea (as distinct from collections of small groups).

Even Musashi could not fight an army.

Reports from inside Valve suggest that their "organisation" consists of putting a bunch of highly-motivated, highly-creative, highly-skilled people in close proximity, with a bunch of high-spec computers and a plentiful supply of food, drink, etc, and letting them get on with it - periodically, people's jobs are peer-reviewed and their salaries adjusted as a result. The lesson here is that, under the right circumstances, ability self-organises, and all management need to do is avoid getting in the way...