Welcome to Edition #110 of Gorick's newsletter, where Harvard career advisor and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Gorick Ng shares what they don't teach you in school about how to succeed in your career.
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→ Read time: 4 min
STORY
Why Thomas Edison would be nothing without his team
You may have heard of Thomas Edison—one of the most prolific inventors in history and the man behind the lightbulb.
But did you know that many of Thomas Edison’s inventions didn’t come from him alone—but from his team?
It’s 1876. Shortly after coming up with his first commercial success—an improved stock ticker—Edison had an “aha” moment: if he wanted to be a prolific inventor, he couldn’t do it alone.
Armed with the insight that “there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability,” Edison was convinced: he needed to scale himself. He needed a team.
So, he founded the Menlo Park Laboratory in New Jersey, a first-of-its-kind “invention factory.”
Edison “hired a team of machinists, chemists, electricians, and draftsmen” who worked side by side, churning out experiments—and, in turn, inventions—like an assembly line.
At first, Edison closely oversaw every project as if his people were an extension of his two hands.
But as the lab’s employee count grew, Edison’s approach shifted: he acted more as a mentor, sharing “initial guidance and suggestions” with his team members before allowing them to find their way to a solution and outcome
Fast forward and, in just six years, Edison’s laboratory produced over 400 patents for different inventions, including the lightbulb, the phonograph, and the carbon transmitter.
What does this mean for you?
The next time you find yourself seeing a big name and thinking, Wow, this person’s a genius!, remember Thomas Edison—who cemented himself as a brilliant mind by learning to delegate to brilliant people.
UNSPOKEN RULE
Get good at delegating.
As we’ve discussed, the higher up you go, the more you’ll go from “doing work” to “scoping work”—and then “deciding work.” Edison realized that not even inventors are exempt from this framework. Sure, plenty of inventors work alone. After all, Edison himself worked alone when he first started out.
But given that we all have only 24 hours in a day, there are limits to what we can get done ourselves.
If you want to get more done, you’ll need to scale yourself. Knowing how to use AI effectively so you can do tasks in a fraction of the time is one way to scale yourself. But even then, at some point, you’ll have to delegate work to other human beings.
How do you delegate effectively?
5 steps:
1. Share the “why”: “The broader goal here is to _______.”
2. Share the “what”: “The deliverable is _______.”
3. Share the “how”: “Please [use this template / do this… then this… / _______].”
4. Share the “by when”: “Would it be possible to [get a first draft / chat about what you learn] by [time]?”
5. Share the priority list: “This is a [higher / lower] priority than _______, so please prioritize _______ first.”
I know what you’re wondering: “Seriously? You’re saying that if I just say these lines, I’ll become Thomas Edison, too?”
If this is you, hang on! Knowing how to delegate well is merely a tiny piece of knowing how to manage well. (And no one’s perfect; in the case of Edison, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that he was actually quite disorganized.)
As imperfect as Edison may have been, one thing is clear: it’s unlikely he would have been the prolific inventor he was had he not learned to scale himself and delegate.
Learn to delegate!
Gorick
What’s an “unspoken rule”? They’re the things that separate those who get ahead from those who stumble—and don’t know why. You can learn more about these rules in the workplace in my Wall Street Journal bestselling book called—you guessed it—The Unspoken Rules.
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Sources:
- Thomas Edison
- The upstairs portion of Edison’s laboratory.
- improved stock ticker
- “there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability,”
- “invention factory.”
- “hires a team of machinists, chemists, electricians, and draftsmen.”
- Thomas Edison in 1929 with one of his lamps.
- “initial guidance and suggestions”
- “Menlo Park produced over 400 patents.”
- he was actually quite disorganized
