Comments on: Butterfly people http://www.internettime.com/2010/07/butterfly-people/ Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:55:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= By: Jay Cross http://www.internettime.com/2010/07/butterfly-people/comment-page-1/#comment-3347 Jay Cross Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:19:05 +0000 http://www.internettime.com/?p=3963#comment-3347 A friend emailed me this comment: "There's more to this story, especially the dimension of time -- and accumulated value. When the bricklayer is done, the value is there. It's the finish line. When the software engineer is done, the value has just started to accrue. It's the starting line. Developers' work can add incremental value for years to come. And that's to say nothing of the technical breakthroughs that become significant competitive advantages (e.g., trade secrets), protected intellectual property (e.g., patents), and ecosystem generation (e.g., open source). With intellectual activities, the temporal dimension is a significant factor." jay A friend emailed me this comment: “There’s more to this story, especially the dimension of time — and accumulated value. When the bricklayer is done, the value is there. It’s the finish line. When the software engineer is done, the value has just started to accrue. It’s the starting line. Developers’ work can add incremental value for years to come. And that’s to say nothing of the technical breakthroughs that become significant competitive advantages (e.g., trade secrets), protected intellectual property (e.g., patents), and ecosystem generation (e.g., open source). With intellectual activities, the temporal dimension is a significant factor.”

jay

]]> By: Donald Clark http://www.internettime.com/2010/07/butterfly-people/comment-page-1/#comment-3328 Donald Clark Sat, 03 Jul 2010 04:32:38 +0000 http://www.internettime.com/?p=3963#comment-3328 Delong & Vijayaraghavan (2003) reported that it makes more sense to go after the large middle-base (B-players) as they make up the great majority of employees (80%) as opposed to the top 10% of star A-players, and the bottom 10% of incompetent C-players): “Like all prize-winning supporting actors, B-players bring depth and stability to the companies they work for, slowly but surely improving both corporate performance and organizational resilience... They will never garner the most revenue or the biggest clients, but they also will be less likely to embarrass the company or flunk out... these players inevitably end up being the backbone of the organization.” The authors further noted that an organization's long-term performance and survival deeply depends far more on the contributions of their B-players. These steady performers counter-balance the ambitions of the company's high-performing visionaries, whose strengths, when carried to an extreme, can lead to reckless or volatile behavior. Thus, B-players stabilize the actions of the A-players. Delong, T. J., Vijayaraghavan, V. (2003). Let's Hear It for B-Players. Harvard Business Review, 2003 Jun; 81(6):96-102, 137. Delong & Vijayaraghavan (2003) reported that it makes more sense to go after the large middle-base (B-players) as they make up the great majority of employees (80%) as opposed to the top 10% of star A-players, and the bottom 10% of incompetent C-players):

“Like all prize-winning supporting actors, B-players bring depth and stability to the companies they work for, slowly but surely improving both corporate performance and organizational resilience… They will never garner the most revenue or the biggest clients, but they also will be less likely to embarrass the company or flunk out… these players inevitably end up being the backbone of the organization.”

The authors further noted that an organization’s long-term performance and survival deeply depends far more on the contributions of their B-players. These steady performers counter-balance the ambitions of the company’s high-performing visionaries, whose strengths, when carried to an extreme, can lead to reckless or volatile behavior. Thus, B-players stabilize the actions of the A-players.

Delong, T. J., Vijayaraghavan, V. (2003). Let’s Hear It for B-Players. Harvard Business Review, 2003 Jun; 81(6):96-102, 137.

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