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Rita Bailey of QVF Partners, co-author of Destination Profit: Creating People-Profit Opportunities in Your Organization, was one of our content leaders this afternoon at the Invitational Forum on Leadership and Management. She told an interesting story:

One of the groups she works with hired a younger woman as a graphics designer. She had some piercings and tattoos, which concerned the hiring manager somewhat, but her work was great and she came highly recommended. The hiring manager watched her at work during her first days on the job, and he noticed that she often had her iPod on; he also noticed that she typically had multiple instant message windows open on her screen as she worked.

He stopped by one day to ask her how she was doing. “Oh, I love this job!” she said enthusiastically. He asked her about the instant message windows; she said, “Oh, that’s my posse. I take them with me wherever I go.” She said that these colleagues, physically located all over the world, were her resources and sounding board; when she had a question or needed ideas, she turned to them. They, in turn, had their own posses to draw from.

Bailey noted that this woman typically completed projects in half the time it would have taken the organization’s previous graphic designer. It probably didn’t hurt that she had the initiative to develop her own learning opportunities and resources—completely independent of any one organization where she worked.

Do you have a posse?