Success has many Fathers, where Failure is an orphan. One of my favorite sayings and one that is very noticeable in every area whether it is politics of a governing nature or office work politics which is where most of us experience it the most.
It is wired into us to gravitate to what appears to be working or turning out well and to retch from what is not. Also it is probably quite natural to blame what didn’t work right and prevents a success on someone else and to take a disproportionate sense of our own contribution to the successful endeavor.
In the field that I spend my time in (Technology development), it is probably a more observable manifestation though I also don’t believe by much. My experience has been that most of the reasons for success are clearly centered around a very small number of people. 2 or 3 bright, hard edged developers with a clear product focus and requisite skills to make ideas happen. They know writing code is not just an academic exercise. An executive with the confidence to confer considerable authority on the small group of developers and playing a balancing act of nudging the effort in a certain direction, giving more authority when needed and taking it back as the project reaches a stable point. Of course others on the team fill in the gaps that are necessary to purvey something which will be viewed as success but usually they are replaceable.
One of the risks is if something is a budding success, not quite there yet but viewed as having that potentiality too soon, then the “Fathers” mushroom and smoother the poor effort before it can be truly birthed.
Most budding successes eventually are deprived of the necessary oxygen to survive as those wanting to be part of the success jump on and smother the effort.
[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares[/tags]
I think you echo my sentiments exactly. A very worthwhile post with much truth in it.