12/25/2023 0 Comments The invisibles tv showBut fail to understand and give them what they do crave, and you will lose them, along with the tremendous value they deliver. Because they don’t crave recognition, they don’t spend time on self-promotion, so it’s easy to take them for granted. But along the way I came to realize something else about Invisibles: They are a management challenge. My discoveries about what makes them tick are the subject of my forthcoming book. I have traveled around the U.S., to Europe, and to Asia to meet with Invisibles. (When is the last time you read a great article and thought to yourself, Man, that was fact-checked beautifully!) Other Invisibles I’ve met include an elite interpreter at the UN a piano technician for a world-renowned symphony orchestra a perfumer who’s created blockbuster fragrances for the likes of Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, and Tom Ford and magazine fact-checkers. But without engineers like Poon, those towers wouldn’t stand. When we see a grand building, if we think of its structure at all we think of the architect. They include people such as Dennis Poon, the lead structural engineer on some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers. Invisibles work in a wide range of fields. Michael Cronan is a member of a class I’ve come to call “Invisibles”: extremely capable and committed professionals who could easily succeed in high-profile careers but instead gravitate to work that is outside the spotlight. But invariably, she would be met with “a confused look.” No one thinks about where names come from. “I would mention to the person next to me that I’d had something to do with the name,” she said. She admitted to occasions when she and Cronan would be on an airplane and notice Kindles in use around them. After all, there are very few people in the world who can introduce words that penetrate a culture with near ubiquity. When I spoke with Hibma, who now runs the firm, I kept pressing her on the remarkability of her trade. (One of Cronan’s earlier projects, TiVo-a device that few people today actually own-is still used as a verb for recording television shows.) Yet the name Michael Cronan itself is all but unknown. Untold millions read, speak, and think about them every day. Michael Cronan’s thoughtful approach has produced numerous brand names that are embedded in our culture. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.” “We didn’t want it to be ‘techie’ or trite.” Hibma went on to quote Voltaire: “The instruction we find in books is like fire. The name had to strike just the right tone and provide a solid root for numerous expected spin-offs. “Jeff wanted to talk about the future of reading, but in a small, not braggadocio, way,” Karin Hibma, Cronan’s former business partner and now widow, said in an interview with the design journalist Steven Heller. We might see product names as a mere afterthought to more serious concerns in an R&D process, but Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, felt differently. Michael Cronan, the head of the firm, ultimately chose a word that means “to start a fire, to arouse.” The company that brought in Cronan is Amazon. Just a year into the endeavor, the huge tech company behind it brought in an outside firm to create a key component of the product: its name. In October 2004 a skunkworks project called Lab126, staffed by brilliant and accomplished engineers, began a three-year venture developing a device that would revolutionize an industry. These actions are well worth taking, as Invisibles not only bring exceptional levels of achievement to an organization but quietly improve the work of those around them, elevating performance and tone across the board. Leaders should recognize who their Invisibles are decide if they want more Invisibles on the team reward them fairly, soliciting reports on their accomplishments make the work more intrinisically interesting and talk to the Invisibles about what works best for them. The usual carrots don’t motivate them however, managers can take several steps to ensure their satisfaction. Something else unites Invisibles: They represent a management challenge. And they savor responsibility, viewing even high pressure as an honor and a source of fascination. “Invisibles” work in fields ranging from engineering to interpreting to perfumery, but they have three things in common: They are ambivalent about recognition, seeing any time spent courting fame as time taken away from the work at hand. Even in an age of relentless self-promotion, some extremely capable professionals prefer to avoid the spotlight.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |