Are you suppressing your Jeremy Lin’s?

The New York Knicks newly famous point guard Jeremy Lin is all over the news these days. He went from bench warmer to hero in practically a blink of an eye.

Lin went from being unknown with sparse playing time to averaging 24.4 points per game. He also has racked up 9.1 assists and 4.0 rebounds over the past seven games. So what’s up with this performance? How does a guy go from barely playing in a mop-up role to the hero of New York? And apparently, all the Nicks sports paraphernalia with his name and number are sold out for weeks.

Here’s a low level guy in the Knicks organization who got a chance to shine and has made the best of it. Whether he’s playing above his level for a short time period or he has permanently increased his effort and intensity are yet to be seen. The point is, Lin got an opportunity to play in an intense game situation and responded like an all star. It’s not that he was ever a terrible player. You don’t make an NBA team if you suck, especially on a team like the Knicks. Lin never got his chance to play due to the number of high profile players on the team.

Are there Jeremy Lin’s in your organization trying to shine? Do you have employees with creativity and high performance pent up because of because of your style or policies? Are you creating an environment in your organization that allows your employees to perform their best? It’s a difficult balancing act between creating procedures to standardize work and performance and letting everyone manage themselves. No business owner is comfortable near the chaos end of the spectrum. But if you operate completely on the control end, employees, especially professionals will feel that their talents are being wasted and efforts going unappreciated.

You see spectacularly high performing organizations that have put a team of people together and turned them loose to create magic. Companies like Google or the design house IDEO have great results in a loosely managed organization where professionals are treated as such. One of the differences is these organizations manage expected results, not activities. Frankly, part of it is organizational magic; the right combination of environment, people, work, tools, owners, and expectations. It’s difficult to create this magic, so owners have to work really hard to create an environment where employees can take pride in their work. And this applies whether you’re managing a group of rocket scientists or manufacturing widgets.

Do you have a tip for managing people to high performance results?