The Myth of the Lone Genius
NEWSLETTER 002
21 September 2026
Munster, late 2017
Rassie Erasmus was running the rugby operations at Munster, in the south of Ireland, when SA Rugby brought him home. The approach didn't even start with a call from head office. It started on Rassie's side: his lawyer, Frikkie Erasmus, took the idea to Mark Alexander, the president of SA Rugby, and Jurie Roux, the chief executive, two jobs most supporters couldn't name if you asked them. What followed was a design job, done in partnership. The three of them shaped a new role above the head coach job, a Director of Rugby contracted across World Cup cycles, built on the model Rassie was already running at Munster, with Frikkie carrying the terms Rassie needed into the agreement. SA Rugby paid the Munster buyout the press called too expensive and put Rassie into it. Rassie could not have hired himself. But the job he was hired into had his fingerprints on it from the start.
That's easy to skip past, because the version of the story everyone already knows only has one name in it. Rassie built the turnaround. Rassie is the tactical mind behind the Bomb Squad and the choke tackle and the kick-pressure game. The players want to play for him. The coaches want to coach for him. Rassie is the one living rent-free in our opponents' heads, and in our hearts. None of that is in dispute. And none of it is the whole picture.
He didn't do it alone, and he was never meant to. Mzwandile Stick has been on the coaching staff every World Cup cycle since 2018. Deon Davids runs the forwards. Daan Human coaches the scrum, having learned it the hard way over eight seasons in France. Andy Edwards, recruited from Saracens in England, heads athletic performance. Duane Vermeulen, who lifted the World Cup twice as a player, now coaches the next generation alongside Franzel September and Bafana Nhleko. Felix Jones came back in 2025 after a year at England Rugby. Jerry Flannery rebuilt the defence in 2024. Tony Brown reshaped the attack the same year. The staff, South African and imported, are co-builders, not a supporting cast. And here's the part the lone-genius version misses completely: nobody handed Rassie a finished structure and slotted him in. He co-designed the role he stepped into, then built, and still runs, a working group designed to outlive him. That was the job from the start.
What to take from the story
The lone genius is a story we tell because it's easier than the true one. One name is simpler to root for, simpler to blame, simpler to put on a cover. But a result only one person can produce dies the day that person leaves. The teams and companies that keep winning after the founder moves on, gets promoted, or burns out are the ones where the founder spent their time building the working group around them, rather than being the only person who could do the job.
Look at how the hire itself worked. The role was designed in partnership before anyone signed: Rassie's agent, the chief executive, and the president shaping it together, around a model the candidate himself had proven. Then SA Rugby built continuity patient enough to back Rassie through a ban and extend his contract through to the 2031 World Cup, and Rassie used that room to co-design the social structure with the staff he brought in. Look at your own best result this year and ask who helped you build it. If the honest answer is nobody, you've built a bottleneck with your name on it.
The rest of the working group is in Chapter 1. How it was built, one hire at a time, is in Chapter 5. The book's at paulsteenkamp.com/books.
The weather this week
I sit in a lot of rooms where a board is looking for one person to fix things: the saviour CEO, the star hire who'll turn the numbers around single-handedly. It's an understandable instinct under pressure, and it's nearly always the wrong bet. The organisations that actually turn around are the ones that stop looking for a hero and start building a social structure that doesn't rely on one, quietly, over years, so that no single departure can undo the work.
Monday Morning
Tell the story of your last big win without using your own name. Whose names do you need?
Rassie would pass this test without trying. When the Springboks win, he says all the coaches can take credit. When a department fails, he says they are all accountable together. And when the Lions video got him banned, he offered to say he acted alone, so the blame would land on him and not the team. He hands out the credit and keeps the blame. That's the opposite of a lone genius.
ONE SMALL
BRAVE THING
Name three people, out loud, who were actually behind your last success, the ones the story usually leaves out. Tell them this week, specifically, what they did.
Paul Steenkamp Writer. Speaker. Builder.
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