What Should Start-Ups Do With the Brilliant Jerk? 480
First time accepted submitter glowend writes "Cliff Oxford writes in the New York Times 'I define Brilliant Jerks as specialized, high-producing performers. They are not, however, brilliant business people, and that is what companies need during periods of rapid growth. There are a lot of hurdles to cross when companies move from start-up to growth, including dealing with chaos and changes in culture. But the biggest hurdle is dealing with the human factor — how you move, shift and replace people as the company grows into the next level of success.' So how do you make the best use of the Brilliant Jerk as your company grows?"
Re:The Jerk (Score:5, Informative)
The word 'jerk' has gone through a transformation from when it started. First it was someone cool, then it was someone who behaves strangely (when that movie was made) and now it means someone completely rude and annoying.
When I was growing up (before the movie) in our neck of the woods, a jerk, as applied to a person, always had the third meaning (rude, annoying), unless one was referring to a "soda jerk" in old time movies. I've never heard of the other meanings, and even my Merriam Webster dictionary doesn't define the other meanings you gave, not even in a historical context. But I'm not surprised either, as all sorts of regionalisms exist that I've never heard of (especially when doing NYT crosswords).
Re:Wait, What? (Score:4, Informative)
And.. what problems did this particular brilliant jerk cause?
From TFA: " A growth company needs enablers, not disablers."
That's really the most damning thing said about him during his employment with TFA's author.
Basically, the author is complaining that somebody had the audacity to tell management that there were problems and flaws with their brilliant ideas. The Jerk wasn't being a jerk, he was approaching issues from a problems-first perspective. Management *hates* when people hear their wonderful new idea and tell them what's wrong with it, or that the whole thing won't ever accomplish what they want because of this or that, or that it won't work unless this or that is also done or stopped.
It's been my experience that management only likes to be treated like a 6th grade english class. There are no wrong answers, everyone's right, yippee feel-good-happytime!
Anecdote: I once worked for a place that spent in the neighborhood of 2.5mil to distribute a procedure across many employees that had previously been centralized. They had 3 people doing that job, and spent all that money so they could eliminate 2 of them. They were making ~40k/year. Even if you assume their total benefits ran the company 80k/year, that's still ~15 years until they hit a break-even point. And that's not taking into account that from the start, their distributed plan was executed poorly (despite employees having pointed out those problems before anything was installed) and the quality was decreased (as the employees who were forced to take on a new task weren't really able to perform it well, it was an industrial environment and there simply wasn't the time for them to dick around with something else and still keep pace with the machinery and other employees). That was also pointed out, and ignored.
The next year, despite more protestations that the idea wasn't going to work and calm explanations why, another 1.5mil was spent installing more crap that was slower and more unsafe and more prone to failure than the previous procedure.
Decision makers don't like being told their ideas aren't all brilliant, and when their decisions only affect the jobs done by those below them it's pretty simple to pass off any failure of their idea to work as a failure of the employees, not of the idea. Anyone who points out the problems with the idea is labeled a jerk.
In my book, it's the dingleberries with the inflated egos who are unable to take criticism of their ideas productively who are the jerks. But hey, what do I know. Wait, no, scratch that. What I know is irrelevant. All that matters is WHO I know, gosh I'm dumb!
Re:easy (Score:5, Informative)
Throw a bunch of 'workers' together without any purpose, capital, tools and management and see how far that takes you in terms of productivity.
Pretty far, actually... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Isolate them (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between somebody who disagrees with management and a jerk: When the boss presses the dissenter for more details, the non-jerk can produce information about exactly what's going wrong, why it's hurting the company, and what they propose to fix it. The jerk, when pressed, on the other hand, will announce that the boss is a moron who will never "get it".
And yes, the greatest managers in history tolerated all sorts of dissent. For instance, Abraham Lincoln dealt regularly with cabinet secretaries (e.g. Samuel Chase) and top generals (particularly George McClellan) who hated both Lincoln and his other top officials.
The Jerk (Score:5, Informative)
The Jerk must be fed ... with pizza and Coca-Cola.
It must be kept cool and in the shade during summer days and kept warm and cosy during the harsh storms of the winter.
Always keep the Jerk dry and away from women.
Do not talk with the Jerk unless about jerky things.
The Jerk needs better and faster machines than the others, whom we do not want to mention here.
That is the way to keep the Jerk ... to increase your wealth and wisdom.
Re:Wait, What? (Score:3, Informative)