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One of the foremost practices in business is to make sure you have a group of people with wildly varying skills. This group of people each need to believe that they need your company as much as your company needs them, or else you’ll simply end up with a powder keg of people learning how to subvert your market position. There is a balance that must be struck between individual determination and the good of the company.
When you have a diverse group, you need to remember that everyone has their own temperament and their own set of biases. We have to learn to live with our own biases, as well as other people’s. Much of this learning process involves dealing with situations where one set of skills balks at someone else’s job. As cliche as it is, sometimes “that’s not my job” can be neneficial to your company. Part of this is because one person won’t get the impression they can or would want to do everything within the company.
While it might seem like some form of manipulation fo have people split up like that, it isn’t. A lot of people actually find themselves being more productive as specialists in one particular area. Since they don’t have to be concerned about a dozen different areas at any given time, a specialist gets to devote all of their energy to running their area. This not only reduces the troubles a person runs into trying to multitask too much, but eases their desire to want to run off and start their own company if you get too tyrannical for them occasionally.
