The World is “Spiky”

Author: Dave Crisp

25 Mar

It’s interesting how one idea leads to another. A friend who interviews senior leaders regularly found one referred to their best performers as "spiky." I hadn’t heard the word, but it instantly created mental links. First, when you draw a personality profile of someone, some people are "spiky" in the sense that they are very high on some qualities and very low on others. Seeing how the word is usually meant – that such people are prickly – seeing "spikes" in their profile makes an interesting visual.

A second association is the idea that many top leaders especially are "difficult" personalities, ego-driven, driving others hard… out of balance in at least some ways. But does that mean they have to behave like jerks? No. Either they or a close partner with less "spiky" personality can make a team work and can moderate the impact of the ‘spikiness.’ It’s a challenge for one person, especially a ‘spiky’ one, to manage both needs – creative drive and teamwork.

What produces creativity and drive is often lopsided emphasis on some ideas to the exclusion of others. We want those people on our teams for their tremendous potential. They see things we miss, but they can be difficult to work with at the best of times, even as rank and file team members, and they miss things that are essential to the overall picture. They get into power on teams when a situation arrives for which their style is a clear fit – like Winston Churchill in Britain during World War II. As soon as it’s over they no longer fit and a different kind of leader is required. In Churchill’s case they couldn’t wait to toss him out of office, but with most leaders once they’re in the job, people hesitate to fire them.

The ideal solution is a workable blend – flexible leaders managing ‘spiky’ creative people or the other way around. The flexible people need to be allowed to knit the team together, otherwise it blows up – turnover can be astronomical.

Most startling of all was to run across this graphic picture of the world and its international "spikes" of population and creativity, which makes the idea of "spikes" even more visible globally. Looking at it one can’t help wondering how these people will get along and work together in future to make a better world. We need cooperation if we are going to survive without suffocating ourselves and running out of resources: http://www.creativeclass.org/acrobat/TheWorldIsSpiky.pdf.

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