Why is there more talent in lower ranks than in management?
At generally unmotivated companies, why can you find more motivation and talent in the lowest ranks than in management? Not a number game It obvious that at large, unmotivated organisations there are a lot of hidden gems: talented people at the lowest ranks who somehow just don’t belong there. One of the countless examples would be Nokia where, even when the company went into free-fall and was losing market share by the day, some of the best engineers in the world were still working there – mostly on the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder. However, as we start to look up that ladder, we find fewer and fewer of these world-class talents; some might argue that this is just a numbers game. If there are 100 people on one rung of the ladder, then the next rung only has around 10 people, so it’s 10 times less likely to find someone exceptional there. That argument is incorrect. In an ideal setup, the selection criteria for attaining that next level should be 10 times more stringen