Many things, to be sure, but one I find stands out time and time again. It is the ability to focus on what needs to be done, not whether you like the person tasked to do it.

George Will, in his book on baseball, Men at Work, written twenty years ago, noted that players on great teams don’t necessarily like each other, but they absolutely respect each other. It’s a key point. So many of us forget it far too often.

The great manager remains focussed on the task at hand, whether that task is large or small. Integration of two IT platforms following a merger is a major undertaking for most enterprises, fraught with risk. It is typically also fraught with competing views, incomplete analysis, hidden vested interests, and snakes in the grass long forgotten if ever previously noted. It takes a special kind of person to drive this process. Many such people come with their own personality quirks and gift for embarrassing others at the worst possible moment. (Not unlike great talents in practically every field!)

Watching such a person at work, others will from time to time be driven to ask, “Why does the CEO allow this person to remain on the property? Is he not the most annoying person you ever met? Half crazy. What DOES the CEO see in him?”

What indeed, other than someone who can get the job done.

Over 200 years ago at Valley Forge, George Washington stood behind a thoroughly obnoxious, clearly ambitious, foul-mouthed Prussian whose claims to deserving the rank of General were more than a little suspect. Why? Not because Washington needed to work on his German. Because Washington needed someone who could create military order out of colonial farmer chaos. Washington knew that he had no idea how to make it happen himself. But he did know that without it he would never be able to engage the British regulars in a fair fight. Months later, when the army broke camp, Friedrich von Steuben had given Washington a real army, stunning everyone with its ability to go head to head with British at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in June.

The is more to it, however, than just recognizing and empowering the talent needed to get the job done. Ask any head coach who had the privilege of being given Terrell Owens as a wide receiver. Talented beyond belief. But also gifted in an ability to radiate disrespect for those around him, and making it impossible for the team to function as a team.

Perhaps, then, it is as Will put it in his book. Great teams are built on talent, not collegiality and rah-rah team spirit. At the same time, though, there must be a culture of respect. Forging and enforcing a culture of respect was another part of what took Washington to greatness. And it may hold the key to getting great results from people you would never ask over to the house for beer and pizza.

The book Blink is all about jumping to conclusions. How our conscious mind often creates confusion and error where our subconscious has already processed the facts at hand more quickly and more astutely. That is a powerful insight, but only if we pay attention to what problem our subconscious is solving, and ask ourselves if that is really the right problem.

Chapter One of Blink is all about “thin slices”. How the mind can get the “right answer” from what would seem like a hopelessly small bit of data. One of the key examples Gladwell cites has to do with medical malpractice. It turns out that one need only have brief exposure to a doctor to determine whether he is more or less likely than normal to be sued for malpractice. Listening to the doctor talk to a patient – even if you can’t make out what he is saying – will tell you far more about these odds than studying where he went to school, what grades he got, and what credentials he holds. Why? Because it turns out that being sued for malpractice has little to do with committing malpractice. People sue doctors they don’t like. The likelihood of a doctor being sued for malpractice has practically nothing to do with the odds that he will commit a medical mistake. It has everything to do with whether the patient liked him before he committed the mistake.

After going through several other interesting illustrations of the principle, Gladwell closes the section with the following passage:

“Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk to you, if you have the sense that he is talking down to you, and that he isn’t treating you with respect, listen to that feeling [emphasis in original]. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting.”

What!?!? Wanting for WHAT? Having just spent a dozen pages explaining that how you feel about a doctor has nothing to do with his medical competence, Gladwell tells you to listen to your feelings?!?!? In fact, the cynic would say he got the answer exactly wrong. Since how you feel about the doctor says nothing about his competence, you should use a doctor you don’t like, since at least that way when he does make a mistake you will be more likely to sue him and get some money out of the deal as consolation!

Rarely do we get to see such a clean expression of using valid data for the wrong decision. “Love” at first sight is not only possible, it is highly probable based on what we know about “thin-slicing.” But that is a completely different question from whether perfect marital mating at first sight is possible. One is about feelings. The other involves a host of other factors. (Indeed, it reason to fear that places like match.com might actually be more likely to succeed than following our thin-slicing libido!) Another popular example of “thin slicing” is how a few seconds of watching a professor teach will allow you to predict how that professor will be rated in teacher evaluations at the end of tan entire semester. Again, feelings can predict feelings. But what you do NOT know is whether that professor actually produced better students than another professor less highly rated by his students. NO MEASURE OF ACTUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT HAS BEEN TAKEN – WE HAVE SIMPLY USED FEELINGS TO PREDICT FEELINGS. Patton was a great general. Patton was popular with his men. We can not deduce from that observation that generals popular with their men are great generals.

Blink. By all means. But then think. There is no substitute. That’s how we as a species came to be able to determine that our response to a hose encountered late at night on the garden path should not be dominated by our subconscious response to the shape of a snake.