Situation- Yves Saint Laurent, the French couturier, died on June 1st. Like in many successful enterprises, the visible public figure is always the creative one and the behind-the-curtains person is always the one who has the business insights. The Economist obituary reads: "As it was, a series of innovations followed, with Mr Saint Laurent responsible for the designs, Mr Bergé for the business, including the scents, scarves, unguents and over 100 other products marketed with a YSL label."
- In Raphael's "The School of Athens" painting, Plato is the "old, grey, wise-looking, bare-foot" who "gestures upward to the aetherial realm of his eternal forms". By contrast Aristotle, "in mature manhood, handsome, well-shod and dressed", "stretches his hand and indicates with his gesture the worldliness, the concreteness, of his contributions to philosophy"
- A professor at IIT ID once mentioned the idea of splitting the figure of design project lead and creating the figures of director and producer. Like in the film business, the director would care about the vision of the project and the producer would coordinate activities to make sure the project stays on track, within schedule and with the right talent in place.
Suspicion
- What are the reasons why it is so difficult to have both skills in one single person? Is it the time it takes to manage both streams? Is it because of the 'switching costs' of multitasking? Is this the reason why some of the brightest managers seem to suffer a case of acute schizophrenia?
Picture: Raphael "School of Athens"
Posts
I'm so glad you brought this up--it's something that our firm has been struggling with. We have plenty of people who are good at producing but don't want to be (or are not good at being) directors. The director position is the hardest to fill because it requires not only leadership skills but also vision, and, ideally, the ability to help everyone on the team succeed in whatever way they contribute. It turns out that very few people are great at all three...
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