Great weekend at FOO Camp, which is the annual O'Reilly campout, and the original "unconference". I took a lot of notes while I was there, and will post them in batches.

The first talk I went to was Getting High Performance out of High Potential People by Keoki Andrus of Intuit. Since I work with a posse of supersmarties this was quite relevant.

First we talked a little bit about the characteristics of High Potential People. They tend to be smart, sure, but they also tend to be the kind of people that are incredibly curious, motivated and passionate, who have their own personal projects going, are always thinking and learning -- a lot of FOO Camp attendees, truth be told. I didn't take notes during this part, so don't want to attribute anything to Keoki that he didn't say. But I think you get who these people are.

1. Design and deliver RFMB solutions. RFMB means "Right For My Business" -- obviously in a work situation, you need to figure out what the job at hand is, otherwise everyone will be unhappy.
2. Figure out what work activities turn them on and off. Then for their job, downplay the stuff they hate, or that are their weaknesses, and figure out what they love doing. Make their job mostly about the things they love doing. And figure out what they are solving for not only in their jobs but in their personal lives as well.
3. Listen and Care. Get to know them deeply. Follow them around. Walk them through journey line analysis. Look for activities that "light them up". (There are also many tools to discover this stuff, Keoki says, like Meyer-Briggs, Strengthfinder.com, but nothing can replace gtting to know them. What you're looking for is deeply embedded life interests.

Keoki noted that there are also some Deadly Deficiencies for which should never be overlooked, not even for High Potential People. Some of these are:

1. Contempt for others. -- thinking that other people's feelings are unimportant, and people that are chronically offensive in their language, or towards what HR calls "protected classes", i.e. racist, sexist, etc.
2. Obsessed with self. Their first thought is: what am I going to gain by X decision. These people also "use human shields" which I take to mean that they take all the good for themselves and pile the blame on others, usually their underlings.
3. Committment Dysfunction (At this point we started moving faster as time was running out)
4. No Productive Focus Some people, even if they're brilliant, can't do anything useful. This is really frustrating, but unfortunately, pretty common. I see it all the time.
5. Unrelenting Pessimism Thinks everything will fail
6. Embraces Dilbertian views of leaders Basically, resents anybody in a position of authority.

Manage for Passion. This is the key takeaway. Unfortunately right after this he skipped right past a slide titled "Top 10 Ways to Build Passion". This made me insane!

Then he told a great anecdote. He was a scrawny little leaguer who was really a terrible player. Game after game he wasn't able to get even one hit. He never hit the ball once. It was demoralizing, humiliating, terrible. And then it was the last game of the season. And the last inning, and the other team was going to win. The pressure was on. And he got up to bat. He swung, and he hit the ball, for the first time. It went 3 feet, maybe 4. It was almost as bad as not hitting the ball at all. And the other team caught the ball, threw it to first and he was out, the inning was over, and the other team won. But what happened next was that his whole team, the coach and everything, ran out to the field, picked him up and marched him around the field on their shoulders and cheered for him. Because he had finally, for the first time, hit the ball.

And the whole rest of the year he practiced and he practiced and stayed after school, and hit and threw and catched, and the next year he was the best player on the team.

Top Ten Ways to Build Passion

1. Respond maturely to failure and setbacks
2. Push Power down

So I only got two of them. But he also had a list of how to demoralize and demotivate people. And I only got the first two of those:

How to Demoralize and Demotivate High Potential People

1. Work overload
2. Lack of autonomy, aka Micromanagement. Apparently the #1 complaint among High Potential people.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time at this point. But it was a great talk.

Next up, The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun

LINK | 11:12 PM | TB

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