I've been kicking around the idea that large companies (and "large" here is very loose on size: it's more an attitude) don't get the best out of their employees.
There are a ton of reasons for this that I won't go into (and those are just the ones that I know/think of) - I wish I knew more of the solutions to those reasons.
Ok, so the quick summary of this story: a guy starts a blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" pretending to be Steve Jobs (Apple CEO: think iPod, iMac, original Mac, Apple II, etc.) - all tongue-in-cheek: everyone knows it's not Steve Jobs. Things Steve should have said, thing people wanted him to say. He got a lot of attention (the real Steve Jobs on stage @ D5: "I want to clear up that I'm not 'Fake Steve Jobs.'").
The big secret was no one knew who he was. No one, that is, until recently. Now the world knows that Fake Steve Jobs is Dan Lyons of Forbes.
Let's put aside any interesting talk of having a fake blog, or blogging for a CEO, etc.. My point here is that Dan Lyons, FSB (Fake Steve Jobs) works for a media outlet. And, now that everyone knows, Forbes.com is "moving" the blog to forbes.com.
Forbes "moving" the blog = "We're interested. We wish we had this material."
Now, obviously, in this case the fake blog wouldn't have originally worked on Forbes.com ("Who's FSB? I don't know, but I'd guess he works for Forbes."). But:
- the material, the content, the interesting (aside from the fake alter-ego of Steve Jobs part of the blog) could have been output from within Forbes.
- the FSB blog is worth est. $250k / yr (eyeballs, hits, ads, dunno)
I'm not blaming FSB saying "he should have posted stuff on Forbes.com and made a name for himself that way." Nor am I saying that "Forbes should have somehow gotten this interest out of their employee and gotten him into the right place to use it." Maybe both those are true. Maybe neither.
I'm just saying there are 2 entities with, purportedly, the same purpose, heading to the same destination via 2 different routes. And if they were on the same path, that might be better for both.
Reading through Ram Charan's Know-How, you get a similar feeling from "Tim" a CEO (pp. 116 - 118) when he talks about a leader who he recognized as such and didn't move to the right position and who ended up at a different company. Tim's sentiment being that he recognized talent, didn't move it to let it bloom and the talent left for somewhere it did bloom.
The moral: If you don't recognize the available talent it may or may not bloom but it definitely won't bloom for you.
Uncovering post: http://publishing2.com/2007/08/05/fake-fake-steve-jobs-on-forbescom/
From the horse: http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/damn-i-am-so-busted-yo.html
