Individuals can make a huge difference.
Coco Chanel is credited with single-handedly (albeit accidentally) turning sun tanning from a sign of poverty into a global fashion trend when in a 1923 cruise from Paris to Cannes she stepped off the Duke of Wellington’s yacht with a startling suntan.
In a less haphazard turn of events, Steve Jobs is credited with single-handedly turning Apple upon his return in late 1996 from a company having to accept a ‘humiliating’ $150 million investment from Microsoft in 1997 and eliciting comments such as Michael Dell’s suggestion that Apple should close up shop and return the money to shareholders, to the largest technology company in the world in terms of market value in 2010.
Individuals can make a huge difference. They can change the fates of wars and nations, they can establish global trends, they can inspire millions of people. That’s why throughout history people and nations have been looking for their ‘messiahs’.
Interestingly enough, looking for smaller scale ‘messiahs’ is not uncommon within today’s organizations as well. Whether it’s a new CEO that will turn a slumping company around or a leader who will spearhead a foray into a new market or a manager who will bring order to a department in disarray, companies are always on the lookout for people who will make a monumental difference.
Is that a sound strategy?
There is no question that staffing critical roles with superstars is something to aspire to and put effort into. Even more so when today’s global market has significantly expanded the pool of candidates and skills to draw upon. The right person in the right job can have a big impact on the bottom line. The right team of people in the right jobs can take a company to a whole different level.
Naturally, the more daunting the challenges of the role to be staffed or the problem to be solved, the more likely it is that companies will look for true superstars. When the challenges get truly dramatic to the point where desperation starts to settle in, then it seems that only someone with a ‘messianic’ profile can step in, take control of the situation and make everything right. It is quite likely that Apple would not have survived for much longer hadn’t Jobs stepped back into the driver’s seat.
But there are also many risks.
With the stakes at play, placing all hopes on a single individual is a gamble. The wrong person in the right job can do a lot of damage and even companies with very elaborate and sophisticated recruiting processes find themselves picking the wrong person.
In addition, bringing in a ‘messiah’ is often coupled with enormous, if not unrealistic, expectations. Even an extremely capable person can fail at meeting such expectations. This is more pronounced in situations where the end goal has not been clearly defined, making success even more elusive.
To complicate things even more, quite often a problematic situation gets attributed to the lack of the right person to handle it, while simultaneously failing to recognize and address other critical organizational and/or external factors. Thus, finding the right person becomes synonymous to solving the problem.
Finally, the search for a (usually external) savior carries with it the implicit (or explicit) admission of failure or lack of talent within the organization. And while failure or lack of talent is sometimes a reality, a repeated pattern of finding saviors outside the company can be very demoralizing for all those already there.
In the end, there is no clear one-size-fits-all strategy. It is certain that some situations call for uniquely gifted individuals. But such situations are probably fewer than we think so when we are in the heat of battle and under enormous pressure to fix things. Understanding when it is time to look for a ‘messiah’ and how to give him/her a fair chance of succeeding is as important as finding that person. Otherwise the ‘messiah’ may never come.
To me, in most times messianism is an internal marketing trick, however this also ends up to be part of the solution for people to commit and deliver the vision and objectives set by management. And this makes it a great topic for discussion.