Organizational Superheroes : Good guys or bad guys?

While attending a conference recently I was reminded of an organizational issue that has given me mixed feelings over the years. As leaders, many of us have found ourselves in charge of teams or in organizations that depend heavily on a tiny number of  go-to employees, sometimes called by their peers the company "rockstars" or "superheroes".  These are usually the individuals who have special knowledge, either tribal or academic (or both), that sets them apart from the rest and puts them in the center of any crisis. They can often be the hardest working folks on the team, uniquely talented in a certain skill, and highly regarded by their peers. Every organization hopes to hire people that will become "superheroes" but the laws of supply and demand mean we never have enough. By their definition, they are special talents that are hard to come by, and therein lies a problem.

Superheroes Don't Scale

To be clear, having amazing employees that solve tough problems and go above and beyond is a very good thing. There can be nothing more comforting than knowing your caped crusader is "on the case" for a tricky problem or issue, because your anxiety immediately diffuses. Having talented folks is something to encourage and reward, but I've found that their presence can actually be a detriment at times, especially in growing organizations, if you aren't careful.

For starters, superheroes are often the folks that excel to make a project or task succeed. This can generally be a good thing, except that at times this means that a superhero actually hides organizational dysfunction or process inefficiency. Ever wonder why your projects grind to a halt when your superhero goes on vacation? Do you go into a cold sweat when a certain member of your team calls in sick?  If this happens on your team it is a good sign you've actually let a "super" individual cover the flaws in your organization. These flaws keep your organization from being able to reach new heights.

Superheroes Eventually Burn Out

Scaling an organization to take on more work, do more, and accelerate often means replicating processes across new teams of individuals. When a working process that depends on a superhero gets replicated, guess what? The copy doesn't do nearly as well as the original. Timesharing the key resource can help with a small ramp up, but eventually the superhero can get exhausted, burnt out, resentful, and stop enjoying their work. Executives who are too removed from front-line personnel can often be found wondering why you can't seem to take a working model and duplicate it, because they don't understand how dependent success is on key individuals. I've seen this situation stop teams, departments, and even companies from reaching for the next level of success.

Superheroes Can Hold the Team Back

While not true in all cases, a common trait of organizational superheroes is that they thrive on the sense of worth they get from the role. It can be an especially difficult problem to overcome because these folks often like saving the day. This can mean there isn't room (or motivation) for others to step up. Some may consciously hold tight to knowledge that keeps them in a unique position. Others may be willing to share but aren't motivated by leaders to do so since their talents are constantly directed to "on the field" issues.

So, what can we do?

To be clear, as leaders, having these folks on your teams is a position of strength but the issues we've covered thus far are serious. Luckily, these issues are also often preventable. Early in my career I fell prey to these team problems because I saw superheroes as rescue resources to be deployed to the trickiest of issues at breakneck speed - effectively perpetuating their role and doing nothing to guard against the problems this brings. Later in my career I became better at amplifying their strengths and diminishing the weaknesses of these special talents in a few key ways ...

Document Knowledge 

While it can be a painful process for some, documenting and capturing the knowledge base these bright minds hold in a durable place is incredibly important. This process helps with scaling out the organization and protects against the lottery ticket/bus accident events we all worry about with these key individuals. The process can even refine the ideas and thinking and bring about improvements to "sacred" practices that the hero has authored. While it may seem obvious, it can be very addictive to keep your heroes on the front lines to feed the deliverables you've committed to. Taking the time to invest in documentation takes planning and resolve, and you may need to convince your superhero that this isn't about taking their value away, but protecting them from burn out and enabling them to get off the front lines and into more strategic problems.

Share the Magic

Encouraging superheroes to take mentees and create "office hours" takes down some of the walls as well. Other folks stop the cycle of thinking "he/she is too busy" and start approaching, learning, plussing, and growing to de-risk the centralization of knowledge and increase their own potential. This is a shift of energy from only solving problems to better equipping the team to do so. 

Build Organizational Capabilities

When a process relies on someone constantly going across enemy lines to succeed, it isn't a process - it is a person. I tell my teams that it is sometimes better for a project fail for the right reasons than succeed for the wrong ones. This means it is important to know where your organizational problems are and not have them obscured by heroics, because as a leader you can't solve what you don't know about. Bubbling up heroic process issues can allow you to create replicable capabilities that allow your organization to grow.

All in all, having amazing and talented people on your team is a godsend and something to cherish as a leader. As long as you are careful about how that person fits into the overall success of your organization, you can avoid turning your superhero asset into a super-sized problem. 

What ideas do others have for making these situations more effective? I welcome thoughts and ideas on this topic.

Cheers,

Adam