Finding high-potentials

- We have been talking about leadership for 10,000 years. Inspiration, communication, decisiveness, visionary, 10,000 years, nothing new. When I begin to examine the people who have no degrees, flunked out of the school, left the school, and they built big businesses. Bill Gates left the school. Zuckerberg left the school. Larry Page didn't finish it. These people, plenty of them in India, plenty of them in Brazil, these people were nobody, nobody will hire them. Steve Jobs, he would not shower for 10 days and he was put on a 2:00 a.m. shift and the people couldn't see in him. So, what is about them? They imagine big. If you thought the market size is X, their mind, because they are able to get information instantly, create a picture coded behind that X At Tesla, imagining what a car can be. Bezoz imagining what a capsule could be to go to space and figured out how to make that an economic proposition. So number one, for high potential: their ability to imagine big problems. Big needs. What the customer will have, will not have and those are real. They are not hallucinations. That's number one. Number two: these people have a particular skill. When they imagine that the need is real, or problem is real it has not been solved. Their singular skill, when I examined these people, is to very precisely define what are the roadblocks? I have come to call, what are the impossible hurdles? They are very precise, they are very clear. There's a lot of mental gymnastics to isolate and they know they can't solve it, but pinpointing impossible hurdles is what they thrive on. And guess what? They say, "I may not be able to solve it, "we will find those who can," and they will go as if known, to the end of the Earth, and they have courage and gumption to pick up the phone and call anybody. It's well known, when Steve Jobs was about 18 years of age, and he calls the CEO of Hewlett-Packard on the phone and gets to see him. All these people do that. Today it's easier because we have companies in Silicon Valley. If you have an idea and you're nurturing it, and you want $100,000, they give it to you, but they'll do you more if the idea was big, they will connect you to Bill Gates directly. These people are not "I am the guy who does everything." These guys, in their nature, in their psychology, they build an ecosystem. Partners. Find them. Nurture them. They know the multiplication of talent is going to deliver the results for the future. This is inherent in their psychology. They like to be connected to the people and they build their networks. Today we all know, the power of the networks is an exponential multiplier. In the past we never talked about leadership that way at all. This is new about them and the part everybody talks about, it is very old, but it is new also. About high potential people, have a purpose. A purpose of society, purpose of solving a need. Purpose that will have some benefits and they have insatiable drive to get things done. These four items make them unique. Find those people early. Don't let them go through bureaucracy. Put them under the right mentoring, right bosses, right teams. You will be differentiating your company.