Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain, author
Implementation is a lot like sex. It’s much harder on your own, and not nearly as much fun. To get anything significant done you need support — people to have your back and to have your front, people to walk the walk and to talk the talk.
Have your back
You want people who ‘have your back’ supporting your project (see figure 6.1). My favourite example of someone having your back comes from Viking mythology. The Viking berserkers were Norse warriors who wore a bear-hide shirt (ber = bear, serk = shirt, therefore ber-serk = bear shirt). Old Norse literature reports berserkers would fight with ‘a nearly uncontrollable trance-like fury’, showing no regard for their own safety. Almost as important as the berserker was the guy who had the berserker’s back. His role in battle wasn’t to kill the enemy (the berserker was doing that just fine) but to have the berserker’s back — to ensure that no-one killed the berserker from behind. This combination was so successful that just the appearance of Viking warriors wearing bear-shirts could make an army turn and run.
Figure 6.1: personal support model
One of the functions of your supporters is to have your back. They fill in the pieces as you forge ahead, ...
