What separates exceptional organizations from average ones isn’t that people work harder. It’s that one person, one decision, or one improvement changes everything else.
Activity and effectiveness aren’t the same thing. The better question is this: Where will one investment make the greatest difference?
Sometimes it’s technology. Sometimes it’s a process. More often, it’s a person others overlooked. Once you start looking for force multipliers, you begin seeing them everywhere.
The names in the following stories have been changed.
One of the first people who taught me what a force multiplier looked like was an engineer I’ll call Bob.
Before I interviewed him, I was advised not to hire him because English wasn’t his first language. I ignored the advice, and we interviewed anyway. After a panel interview, everyone reached the same conclusion. He was technically gifted, thoughtful under pressure, and unusually collaborative.
I was told a second time not to hire him. I respectfully disagreed. I remember saying, “If we don’t hire him, someone else will.”
The issue was never Bob’s ability. It was whether we were willing to slow down long enough to listen before judging him by an accent. Hiring him remains one of the best decisions I ever made.
Every conversation brought a fresh perspective, and every significant issue became a team effort until it was resolved.
Bob made everyone around him better.
Another engineer taught me an equally important lesson. I’ll call him John.
John spoke slowly. He greeted everyone with “Boss” because that was his way of showing respect. He rarely said more than necessary, and because of that, some people underestimated him almost immediately.
One morning I was instructed to terminate him because he “didn’t seem smart enough” and wasn’t in the office at eight a.m.
What no one realized was that John had worked until two o’clock that morning, preventing a significant network issue from becoming a major outage. He had called me during the night so we could work through the problem together. He wasn’t absent; he was recovering after protecting the organization while everyone else slept.
John wasn’t exceptional because he was technically gifted. He had remarkable judgment. He knew when to act, when to ask for help, and when something deserved immediate attention.
That experience reinforced something I’ve never forgotten. Leaders can’t confuse style with substance. Some of the greatest force multipliers don’t look like force multipliers until you give them the opportunity to demonstrate what they’re capable of.
Force multipliers aren’t always people. Sometimes they’re created by giving people a voice.
At one organization, we made what many considered a controversial governance change. Every major steering committee would include at least three engineers, and those engineers had veto authority.
Some worried it would slow decisions. It did exactly the opposite. The people closest to the work finally had a voice. Architects caught design flaws. Operations identified implementation issues. Engineers challenged assumptions before they became expensive mistakes. Meetings became shorter. Projects moved faster. Rework dropped dramatically—not because we held more meetings, but because the right people were helping shape decisions before they became expensive.
One of my teams spent nearly eight hours every week preparing slide decks. By introducing AI into the process, we reduced that effort to roughly three hours. The real benefit wasn’t the five hours we saved. Those five hours became time to solve problems, meet with stakeholders, improve solutions, and create value no AI could deliver.
I’ve learned that sometimes the multiplier isn’t innovation at all. Sometimes it’s discipline.
One individual consistently challenged every initiative. He questioned every proposal and often frustrated the rest of the team. Many viewed him as an obstacle. I saw someone who cared deeply about getting the right answer. Instead of minimizing his influence, I recommended he lead the steering committee.
Once responsible for balancing everyone’s priorities instead of defending only his own, his skepticism became one of the organization’s greatest strengths. He still asked difficult questions, but now those questions improved enterprise decisions instead of slowing them down.
Sometime later, another engineer on my team had become increasingly frustrated. His day-to-day responsibilities no longer challenged him, but through several conversations I learned he had independently earned three ITIL certifications because he was fascinated by process improvement and finding better ways for engineers to work.
Rather than asking him to continue work that had become routine, I challenged him to think bigger. I asked him to help us rethink our IT governance—how decisions were made, how technology aligned with business objectives, and where frameworks like ITIL could have the greatest impact. I wanted him to help shape how the organization operated—not simply implement processes.
What started as an engineer looking for a new opportunity became a broader transformation in how we governed technology. He found work that inspired him. The organization found a leader.
The greatest force multiplier I’ve ever experienced wasn’t a person, a process, or a technology. It was culture.
On one program, a junior engineer made a mistake that briefly disrupted network connectivity for an entire headquarters building.
Leadership immediately wanted a name.
I refused.
The team owned the mistake.
The team owned the solution.
Sometime later, another significant outage occurred. Once again, fingers immediately pointed toward the network team. Instead of assigning blame, we investigated. The root cause turned out to be a DevOps change.
I contacted the leader privately—not to identify someone to blame, but to understand what happened and how we could prevent it from happening again. We focused on corrective actions and stronger guardrails instead of blame.
Gradually, something changed. People stopped hiding mistakes. Instead of waiting for investigations, they stepped forward.
“This was our change.”
“Here’s what happened.”
“Here’s the fix.”
“And here’s what we’re changing so it doesn’t happen again.”
Accountability replaced blame. Problems surfaced earlier. Solutions arrived faster. Trust became a force multiplier.
When I walk into an organization today, I’m still asking the same question:
Where will one investment make the greatest difference?
Sometimes it’s a person.
Sometimes it’s giving the right people a voice.
Sometimes it’s technology used well.
Sometimes it’s a culture built on trust.
The answer rarely begins with asking people to work harder.
It begins by recognizing the force multipliers that make everyone better.
– Tim
