Two Types Of Teams
Which Of Them Tends To Be More Successful And Why
Written by a human, for humans, always.
To accomplish anything great...
You need to have a team.
Now, “team” can be a loose term these days.
Not every “team” needs to actually be in the same place or organization.
Due to technology, you are capable of having teams made up of different types of people...
From different locations around the globe...
Even belonging to different business entities or who are successful on multiple teams simultaneously...
In all sorts of different industries, even.
For our purposes...
A “team” is just a group of people working toward the same goal...
Which can be directly or indirectly.
Now...
Even within this broad concept of team...
There often are two theories about how to build a team...
Two types of teams that are generally built.
One form of team looks to find all of the best members and bring them together on the same team...
The other form of team looks at what they have available and builds from where they are, promoting or building up from within.
But the real question becomes...
Which of these two types of teams tends to be more successful?
The answer...
Is neither...
Or either...
Depending on how you want to approach it.
See...
The answer really has nothing to do with the recruiting concept...
It has to do with a few other factors.
What are those factors?
Are you able to make progress with who you currently have?
Now...
Many business leaders I have talked to actually answer this quickly without actually knowing the true answer...
Most business leaders jump immediately to say they do not have the right people and therefore need to recruit...
Without actually knowing who is on their team well enough to determine if there is growth potential in any of the members.
It would be like having Michael Jordan on your team and only allowing him to play defense...
He’s great at defense...
But if you never give him the opportunity to shoot...
You just ended up wasting the greatest opportunity that you ever had to win.
Often if you have a really high-growth-potential individual who is not getting utilized to their capacity, and you do not give them opportunities...
They will go find or make opportunities somewhere else and succeed at high levels.
I have seen this happen so often it is ridiculous.
What else does the team need?
Unity with each other to work toward the goal.
You can put all the best people in the world together...
But if those people are not unified...
Either in doing the work or having belief in the possibilities of working together...
Then they will fail...
Even to a team that is significantly less talented and less equipped.
Without unity...
A team is destined to fail.
The final aspect that is important...
Is that you have the right problems being addressed by the team.
Think of it like this...
Let’s say you have someone who is struggling with thinking...
So you get a team of neurologists together to try to figure out what is wrong with the brain...
They work and work but are not finding the answer...
Because for this particular person, the problem is not really their brain...
But rather, they have a gut dysfunction that has caused a breach of the blood-brain barrier...
And their thinking challenges are secondary causes to the breach.
If you are only looking at the brain...
You would end up missing the real problem for this particular individual.
This is a problem that happens on many teams...
They see a problem...
They believe they are working hard on fixing the problem...
Putting together the best people with the best skills for that problem...
But at the end of the day...
They are chasing the wrong problem.
I worked on a team like that in the past...
Where there was a problem happening in the accounts receivable department...
And tons of money was not being collected...
On services that had been long ago rendered.
You would think that the problem would be to simply get more people to collect...
And that team did need more people...
But their biggest problems...
Were actually legal terms that had been overlooked and a loophole that large customers had taken advantage of...
Which allowed them to receive services...
Not begin to pay for those services for six months...
Then sign new contracts that allowed them to be “forgiven” of any unpaid services...
Before the six months were up...
Meaning they were getting free services and legally were not obligated to pay what was past due.
If the right problem had not been identified...
Those problems would have continued to become worse...
Making everything else significantly worse for that organization.
These are the real factors that will determine whether a team is successful or not.
Whether you attempt to recruit the best players from outside an organization...
Or build from within an organization...
If team members are not being fully utilized, they cannot be united toward the same goals, and they are not working on the right problem(s)...
Then they will fail.
Now...
Is there a type of team that, on average, tends to do better?
Yes.
More frequently, building from within an organization works better.
Why?
A few simple reasons...
Often, people in an organization are already not being fully utilized, so there are already gigantic missed opportunities...
Once someone is on a team, they tend to be more likely to remain loyal to that team than to try to bring on people who are not yet loyal...
Bringing on less qualified people onto teams that have people who are not being utilized tends to destroy group cohesion...
And people who are in an organization often already know the problems that exist, or are close enough that they could figure it out if they were utilized fully.
When you look at all of these factors together...
Usually building from within works significantly better.
Does this mean that building a “dream team” is folly?
Of course not...
But it can be difficult to bring together people who are considered “the best” and put them on a team cohesively.
Egos sometimes get in the way.
How things “should be done” will be argued about.
(Often, with all “sides” being correct in different ways or under different circumstances, making it all the more difficult).
Finding the right rhythms to create unity is a challenge.
Then there is the question of patience...
Will those who are considered “the best” be willing to work together long enough to create a fully functioning team?
Or will they see themselves as being underutilized and depart for another team...
Often leaving animosity in their wake before they end up leaving the team.
All this usually means...
Is that your best opportunity to be more successful...
Tends to be first by getting an honest and true evaluation of who you have on your team already and the full extent of what they are capable of...
And then once you have an accurate picture of this...
Recruiting from the outside based on what is truly missing.
If you are working on building a successful team...
Make sure that you are asking the right questions about your team.
To Your Sageship,
Cody
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