You know how large organizations with very mature systems and talent distribution still bring in the same top 5 or 10 people to work on their most pressing problems?
I’ve seen this at Google, at Atlassian, at virtually every well-run company I’ve watched closely. These places have incredibly sophisticated performance frameworks, coaching programs, design systems and assessment processes. They have invested years in building cultures where the average quality bar is high and talent is supposedly evenly distributed across their teams.
And yet. When something comes up that shifts the trajectory, a decision that could reshape their trajectory, a great opportunity they need to take advantage of, leadership doesn’t just route it through the normal channels. They call the same handful of people. Every time.
For a mature team with mature processes and mature systems, wouldn’t leadership let everyone pick the task and it should just work? Isn’t that the whole point of building scalable systems, that you abstract individuals and get consistent, high-quality results regardless of who is working on what?
But it doesn’t work that way. Even with all those systems in place.
For a long time, I assumed that this pattern in my own team meant I was failing as a leader.
Whenever something crucial emerged, a difficult technical decision, a strategic gamble that could change the direction of our course, I found myself reaching out to the same people. It didn’t matter what their official assignments were. When it really mattered, I went to my rock stars.
I had adopted the promise that with the right frameworks, coaching and processes you would get a level, talented team in which everyone could take on any challenge. But no matter how much I invested in building those systems, when the big things came along, I couldn’t just hand it over and trust the outcome. I had to keep bringing in the same handful of people.
I thought this was my fault. I wasn’t coaching effectively enough. I took shortcuts instead of properly developing the wider team. Then I started paying closer attention to how things really worked at the companies I respected, and I realized, oh, everyone is doing this.
Two different jobs
Raising the floor and raising the ceiling are completely different problems that require completely different solutions.
Systems raise the floor. They guarantee consistent quality in routine work. They make you turnover-proof. They let you deal with the predictable stuff on a grand scale. This is extremely important, most of the work falls into this bucket, and executing it reliably is extremely valuable.
But star performers raise the ceiling. They cover the new stuff, the ambiguous stuff, the stuff you really haven’t seen before. When you’re faced with a problem that your systems haven’t encountered yet, when the stakes are asymmetrically high, when you need both speed and quality, you don’t look for someone who can follow the playbook. You are looking for someone with exceptional judgment, pattern recognition across domains, and the ability to synthesize under uncertainty.
The work with the highest influence almost always resists systematization. If you could solve a problem with a framework or process, it would no longer have much leverage. It would be operational.
The free agent model
What makes rock stars different isn’t just that they’re good. It is that they are able to operate somewhat outside the normal structure when the stakes are very high.
Think about how sports teams use free agents. They are not tied to one position or department. They move where the game needs them. That’s how top performers actually work in organizations, whether anyone admits it or not.
Their involvement is demand-driven and not organizational chart-driven. When a critical problem arises, you don’t check who officially owns that area. You ask: who can actually solve this? The answer is usually the same person, regardless of whether it is technically their domain.
They work across borders by default. A top technical leader can suddenly become involved in a customer escalation because he can synthesize the technical limitations with business realities faster than anyone else. A product leader may find themselves in an operational crisis because they better understand second-order effects. According to the organizational chart, they shouldn’t be there. The problem says they should.
They are not permanently assigned, but deployed temporarily. Most people in your team have stable assignments. They own specific areas, specific projects, specific responsibilities. Top artists have that too, but when something with a lot at stake happens, they are temporarily assigned to it. Then they go back. Then they are drawn again for something completely different.
You make a conscious choice: this problem is important enough and new enough that I need someone who can operate outside the script. A formal process would slow this down or weaken quality. So you route through the system, but only for problems that actually warrant it.
The key is to know what those problems are. Not every urgent thing deserves a free agent. Most things should go through your systems. But when you’re faced with something truly unprecedented, something where the costs of getting it wrong are asymmetrical, something where you need both speed and exceptional judgment, you don’t force it through the standard channels. You call your rock star, wherever they are, whatever they’re officially working on.
This is a fair allocation of resources. Your star performers are limited and non-fungible. It is wasteful to use them for problems that systems can solve. It’s also wasteful not to use them on problems that could change everything.
Systems and stars
The best organizations don’t choose between systems and stars. They use both, but for different things.
They build robust systems for everything they’ve seen before. These apply quality at scale and create capacity for more difficult problems. But they also maintain a parallel structure for the unprecedented. When something truly new or critical emerges, they don’t force it through standard tubes. They burden their best people, often across boundaries, and move them fluidly between high-leverage problems as those problems arise.
The systems don’t fail when this happens. They do what they were designed to do, and do everything they are supposed to do, creating space for exceptional talent to focus on exceptional problems.
I stopped feeling bad about relying on my star artists for critical work. The mistake I made was not relying on rock stars to solve the toughest problems. I wasted them on things that my systems should be able to handle, or I thought I could build systems good enough that I wouldn’t need them for unknown things.
You can’t make everyone exceptional
You can’t make everyone a star artist. I really wanted to believe I could do it.
The instinct is to think, “I’ll just coach everyone to that level.” But the people who can operate in great ambiguity, synthesize across domains and make good judgments under pressure are fundamentally scarce. That makes them exceptional.
The goal is not to make your entire team interchangeable at the highest level. It’s about accepting that star talent will always be non-fungible, and building accordingly.
That means two things: first, you need these people on your team. Not later, not ‘as soon as we can afford it’. When you’re faced with problems that could change your trajectory and you don’t have anyone who can operate at that level, you hope for luck. Secondly, you have to use them consciously. They are scarce. Burning them out on routine problems is wasteful. Not using it on unprecedented things is also wasteful.
I’m still building systems for everything I can systematize. I’m still developing my wider team. But I no longer feel guilty calling the same few people when something is really important.
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