Seek out the boring people. The ones who slug it out, doing the work. The people who bring big impact even in small spaces, who aren’t vying for credit, and who show up every day to do it over again even as they go unnoticed.
Boring people know how the sausage is made because they make it. They know what it feels like to do something well. It is their point of pride. They could take it apart and put it back together again.
Boring people are different than the people phoning it in. A boring person is doing a job most people ignore. The phoners are doing a job that everyone ignores.
The conditions for a boring person to excel are: the identification of a problem, the permission to fix it, and constrained resources.
When you stop and marvel at how something works, chances are a boring person figured it out. Not because they’re especially smart, talented, or wealthy, but because they had to even though it was hard. And because everyone else knew someone boring would do it if they just waited.