Jim Collins in Good to Great suggested that ‘getting the right people on the bus’ and then figuring out where to drive it is a key to success.

Recently 37signals in their book ReWork added to this by saying that there’s no use in hiring great people if you don’t have a role or meaningful work for them.  Great.

Well great people / the right people also depend on the context of the organisation.

So, for example a high risk, high energy start up may need very different characteristics and attitudes in the team than a company running high quality operations driven organisation.  There aren’t that many people who can switch between those contexts.

But then again, maybe ‘great people’ means flexible people…

[Photo credit: onegreatclick]