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In a recent essay, Noah Smith asks what more intelligence will actually do for us. One of his examples is Zeiss, the German company that makes mirrors for ASML’s chipmaking machines. If one of those mirrors were scaled up to the size of Germany, its biggest bump would be about a millimeter high. Smith argues that no one, not even Zeiss’s own people, can fully explain how they do it. The know-how is spread across a huge number of employees, each using their own small tricks, often without realizing it. The knowledge lives in the organization, not in any one person.
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I love this point, and this story about Zeiss, so much.
I think we sometimes forget how extraordinary it is that people can come together, physically, virtually, and across time, and build so much more than they ever could alone.
And I get so excited about what is possible when organizations get even better at what they do, especially with values, communication, and work alignment.
Or, to quote one of my favorite poems, Robert Frost’s “The Tuft of Flowers”:
‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’
There is beauty and magic in people in organizations working hard, together, aligned.
