Jim Collins said in his book Good to Great that one of the keys to being a great organization is to have the right people on the bus even if you don’t know where they are going to sit. Great talents will overcome the ambiguity and become productive quickly while the talentless will provide little even with assigned seats.

Let’s say you are the talent. You are on the bus. Hurrah! But, wait a minute: the bus is on fire, running on flats, and about to plunge off a cliff!

Time to find yourself a new bus. Going down with the ship, er bus, is heroic in novels and movies. It’s a waste of your potential in real life.

Ogpreneurs, high talent and motivated people, can do a lot but no one is a miracle worker. Life is short and the time we have to truly make a difference is more limited than we like to consider.

Only stay on a bus that is going somewhere you want to go and has a reasonably good shot of getting there with your help.