A recent family vacation presented me with a great allegory of business life. We had gone away with 3 other families and the kids had immediately bonded, created a small gang and were roaming outside looking for opportunities to explore the world (for the parents amongst you, you know this really means, get into trouble).

While playing, they had wandered over to a small pond buried by snow. One of the kids had become stuck in the snow and was slowly sinking into the pond beneath. Another of the kids was smart enough to run back to the house and tell an adult (who happened to be me) what had happened; I clambered through the snow which with my weight meant I kept dropping through the snow. When I finally reached the stuck child I was presented with a very vivid scenario.

Clustered around the stuck child were 3 other children trying to dig him out. 4 others looked on afraid and unsure what to do. Now these were young children between 5 and 8 so their reactions were very understandable; I was able to pull the stuck child out and carry him cold and wet back home, where within 5 minutes all of them had completely forgotten about the trauma. But that scenario is one I have seen in business a thousand times over. A problem emerges in a business; chaos ensues. Someone raises the issue to management and by the time you get there, someone is already digging. Over the years I have learned that the appropriate culture in a firm is the prime determinant of it's success. In a business such as ours, in a fast paced highly competitive market sector, challenges occur all the time. Speed of reaction is paramount to success and so a command and control structure does not work well - as the military learned many years ago in these types of situations you need a different type of organizational unit - I have on various occasions described this as the 'Navy Seals' model - an autonomous, independent, goal oriented unit staffed by people who you manage by defining their goals clearly and who then independently determine the appropriate manner in which to achieve it.

The question is - how does one create an organization that consists of 'diggers' - people who begin solving problems on their own as opposed to those who stand around and wait to be told what to do? How do you fill an organization with these types of people? Because if you do, you win. Simple.

My next post covers ideas on where to find these people, how to screen for them and discusses whether this behavior can be taught...