A lot of you know who Seth Godin is - blogger, author, marketing thought leader, blah/blah/blah.

He's known for quippy, quick posts.  Like anyone else who writes daily, sometimes they're gold, sometimes they're good, sometimes they're "meh".

He nailed it today talking about companies and organizations either being "battleships" or "Blueberry pancakes."  See the whole post here.

The comparison makes for a good question for HR leaders - are you building a battleship or a blueberry pancake?  Here's some of the difference per Godin:

"The typical industrial-era organization is like a battleship. Hundreds or thousands of people onboard, and most of them are essential--but most of them aren't actually directly responsible for the work that we hired the battleship to do. Without the fuel people, the navigation team, the folks in the med corps and on and on, it doesn't work.

One more thing about the people on the battleship: just about everyone has a punchlist, an itemized inventory of what they need to get done. And many of them are rewarded for doing that set of tasks more efficiently, more elegantly and with better quality than expected. Great people means the system works even better, but it's designed to survive with people who are merely good at what they do.

The typical professional services company, on the other hand, is a lot like a blueberry pancake. While there's an essential support team, the firm is all about blueberries working in parallel. Each blueberry can work independently, and sometimes they even work on projects that might have conflicting outcomes or views of the world. I don't care how many people report to you. I care about how connected and how brave you are.

As the firm gets bigger, it doesn't get thicker. You don't make a better pancake by making a thicker one. You make a better pancake by hiring ever better blueberries."

And, as you might expect, Godin provides more fodder for why most companies (and I'm saying HR practices) don't center they're strategy around the latter - blueberries:

"And, as you've guessed, most of the blueberries don't know exactly what they'll be doing in six weeks, and most don't work from a manual about the industry's best practices on how to do what they do. It's hard to measure blueberries, but a talented and motivated one can also change the world."

Which brings to mind this important point for HR leaders - even if you have to build a battleship to get things done, you ought to always have and protect talent that is like the blueberry Godin references.

Blueberries don't want to serve on a battleship. But if you protect them and give them the right environment, they'll be part of your team anyway.