Geoff Holden

Now, before anybody goes off on me for having a big head or anything, I don’t claim to be a genius, solitary or otherwise–I just think I happen to share a few traits with this unique group of people.

The Solitary Genius is a person who Victor Skowronski talked about in an IEEE Computer article (“Do Agile Methods Marginalize Problem Solvers?”, Oct. 2004) and then again to respond to people who took issue with the first article in this month’s issue (“Talking to the Solitary Genius”, August 2005). (Unfortunately, unless you are a member of the IEEE Computer Society, or have an IEEE Xplore subscription (or be at an institution which does), the full text of those articles won’t be available.) The person described is a true problem solver, and doesn’t generally work well in some of the development methodologies du jour, because of their introverted nature and a possible lack of people skills.

Skowronski used Isaac Newton as his example, but I believe the people who read this might be more familiar with these two examples: the fictional character Michael in Douglas Coupland’s book Microserfs; and John Carmack of id Software fame. Both of these people had the habit of closing the door to their office (how about that, at Microsoft, all programmers/developers get their own office) for days/weeks/months on end, not speaking to anyone or showing any results for this time. But at the end of that period what was returned was pure genius, like the Quake engine.

In today’s environment, those people would be told that they’re “difficult” or that their attitude is wrong. These people would also be labeled as non-performers in environments with short development cycles, as they may have nothing to show for four or six weeks work.

The second article covers how to communicate with these people. Two main points stood out to me:

1. They don’t respond to the same arguments. Often times using an emotional argument might tell this person that you don’t have any logical ones to use.
2. They have little desire to conform to a group’s opinion. These people are used to being right, and tend to trust their own judgment. Also, many of them may be used to not “fitting in” with a group, so having a different opinion is nothing new to them.

So, why do I now write about these people? Like I mentioned above, I can share some traits with these guys. Sometimes when working on a problem, other people are nothing more than a distraction that will steal your time and disrupt your thought process. I find that depending on the problem, working this way is often the most effective approach. Also, I never noticed this until reading the second article, but when people start using emotional arguments in what should be a logical discussion I do tend to tune them out.

So, what’s to be done about all this? I think for these people to be productive in the workplace, it needs work from both sides. I know I’ve done some work over the last few years to help improve my people skills (such as the Dale Carnegie Course) and I think that all of these people should make an attempt to improve in this area. Also the other members of a team (management and otherwise) need to learn how to work properly with these talented introverts. I think it’s worth mentioning that all people are different, and may require different environments to work at their highest efficiency. Pixar understands this–they have little log cabins/castles, etc. instead of cubicles that the employee can configure however they like it. I saw one article where one animator said he works best standing up, so he had a tall desk for his computer so that he could stand and use it. Wouldn’t it be worth it to put some extra money into letting the employees work more efficiently? I think so.

I think the companies that can leverage the power of these problem solvers, by giving them the right problems to solve and not interfering with how they do it, will be the ones that become truly successful.