Hey everyone it's Kurt we need your help with our annual survey this is your last chance to help us get to know you so we can make idea cast even better for you

it's easy just go to HBR.org

podcast survey.

Again, that's HBR.org.

And thanks for listening. Welcome to the H Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green. I'm

talking to date with David Swig, author of Invisibles, the power of anonymous work in an age of relentless self-promotion.

And he's also the author of the HBO article Managing the Invisibles.

Dave, thanks so much for talking with us today.

Thanks for talking with me.

So who is an invisible? How are you defining that term in this, as you put it, age of self-promotion?

Well, invisible as as I define in in the article and then in the book are essentially skilled

professionals whose work is critical to whatever endeavor or enterprise they're

part of, yet who are rarely thought of by the public and often even rarely thought of by the enterprise that they're a part of.

So these are not invisible workers in the sense of a factory worker toiling away that no one thinks of or I don't know the person who

cleans your hotel room for example those workers are hugely important as well but

my book really focused on were people who are highly skilled what they do and

whose work really, their personal stamp really was put on, you know, whatever project or

product that they work on.

Before we get into some examples, I'm just curious.

When you were interviewing these people for the book,

did they like being described that way as an invisible?

You know, interestingly, pretty much everyone was really excited and happy about it.

...