The other day on the Brains on Fire blog in a piece titled, 'Leave your ego at your feet', I read this:
“We should lose the term “rock star” from our vocabulary.”... if you create rock stars, you create an ego driven company (look at us, look at us), instead of a one that is driven by heart and soul. A company that promotes rock stars runs the risk of getting focused on themselves instead of their customers.
The main point of the piece was that organizations and the 'stars' inside of them can get way too arrogant sometimes, can take on too much of air of 'we are the experts, we know everything'.
And if that happens if becomes really easy to get lazy or complacent or out of touch to some extent.
Customers, employees, partners, and the community at large all have incredible amounts of knowledge, insight, and value to add and that often can get obscured by the 'rockstar' glow.
flickr - Kevin Cole
There are 'rockstars' in every organization, surely. These people are of course necessary and indispensable, (and unless you are really fortunate, will certainly leave) but at times the organization can come to over rely on them, and face a significant problem when (and it is when) these stars take their game elsewhere.
Yes, the organization needs stars. To use a (tired) sports analogy, it is generally understood that in the NBA a team can't win a championship without two bona fide All-Stars.
But the teams that actually do win also have several complimentary or role players on the roster that perform those essential tasks that may not be glamorous, may not lead them to huge contracts, and may not make them household names, but are absolutely necessary to have a winning team.
So yes, your company needs a few 'rockstars', but you likely also need support, input, and solid day-to-day contribution from regular 'stars' and likely even some role players for long-term success.
Professional sports like the NBA are about winning right now, so giving the ball to your star player at the end of every close game really is the only strategy that makes sense. But when that player decides to leave for the big money or bright lights somewhere else (please LeBron come to New York), the team can easily be left lacking, without having invested energy or commitment to building the next star player.
Think about it this way, if your very best employee walked out tomorrow would you be prepared to give the ball to someone else at the end of a close game?