A small, obsessed group will always outmanoeuvre a big but non-aligned, non-driven group. Organizations of the future must copy something from early startups, and that’s the culture of high drive, and high obsession. It tends to happen naturally when people work on ideas they believe in. I always say; ‘you want the kind of employee that would be excited to do the job even without payment.’ This culture has been eroded in most places, it’s rare.
It’s what www.bigeye.ug had and still has. You see it in the current Chief Executive Officer, Stuart Kagoro and his lean team. They are obsessed, they are driven. Obsession moves mountains. Again, obsession comes when one finds their intersection of life. Out of this obsession comes great companies. It’s because of obsession that people will spend nights on a neighbour’s floor coding away the next groundbreaking platform.
Obsession cannot be faked. Many people admire it, but it can’t be faked, it can’t be forced. You can see it at Oripler Food and at Ortega Group, just insane obsession. It’s a small group of people so driven by the field, so driven by this journey that they are willing to bet it all and make it happen.
I often ask writers for example, the quickest way to know if you will write for a long time is to answer this question: Would you write even if no one read you? Would you create even if no one was going to use your creation?
I will write an article soon on the unknown, untold factors of production. We were taught production comes down to just land, capital and labour. That’s not the case. There are other variables to production. Take for example obsession, how do you account for it? It’s a prime mover in that equation. Take high levels of trust, that’s also a prime mover.
If you are assembling a team, you want to assemble them based on the Obsession Factor. Because an obsessed team is alchemy in motion. It’s what Steve Jobs said about pirates versus captains. Pirates do wonders at the sea. Every great organization has that little factor of piracy culture. The employees show up at weird hours of the night, pull long-nighters, scale all the extra miles simply because they are just driven, they are obsessed with what they are doing.
It’s important that organizations answer the ‘why’ question and make sure everyone in the organization is clear on that ‘Why’ question. Why are we doing this? Why are we moving towards technology? Why now? Why not tomorrow? Why is this work important? Why must we ship now? It’s obsession that builds a Tesla. It’s not just the capital. There’s something that transcends money. And when a company misses this, it misses the biggest organizing and driving factor.
And when Obsession is Coupled with Discipline, you have organizations that are unbeatable. In fact, you can use this formula to rate countries, societies, companies and individuals. Obsessed and Disciplined Companies always lead, it’s never a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’ Obsession is one of those things where leaders must lead from the front. They must be obsessed for their teams to be obsessed. Obsession can be seen in how things are done, in the speed of execution by the leadership teams.