Harvard Business Publishing

Assembling a "star" team did not work out well for a project I'm familiar with. I only heard about it as I was not on this team, but it failed for a different reason than outlined here.

Simply, the best people brought along a lot of strong egos and opinions. These characteristics created such a dysfunctional team that I'm sure the IGMs weren't even a factor.

I think that question is not the key point to analyze when trying to get the best out of a team. Basically, team performance is more than a ratio between top people and low performers.

The best way to get the most out of a team is to make sure you have the people with the right skills and with proper definition of roles and responsibilities. And you have to add to that the leadership factor, motivation, inspiration in the ranks, etc.

I would suggest The 33 Strategies of War (Robert Greene, Penguin Group, 2006) chapters 4-7. Specifically the chapters where it refers to the following:
- Create a sense or urgency and desperation (Chapter 4)
- Make everyone feel they have an enemy in common (Chapter 7)

-JP
regionativo.com

If your top performer also happen to be great leaders, let them lead. Put them on multiple teams and watch them raise the bar. But effective leaders are rare. If they are simply great at their job, avoid burdening them with the shortcomings of others. There is a danger in trying to pull low performers up with the strength of strong performers. The result is often something in the middle where nobody gets to be great. Sometimes average is good enough for a project. But I see organizations miss opportunities every day by trying to pull all workers to a common performance level.

Part of the answer is "it depends." Sometimes, putting the best people together in a group will motivate everyone to do their best to look good to their peers, or they will spend their time undermining each other in an attempt to make sure that they look like the best performer in the group (their normal position in the pecking order.)

The following details are from memory (I don't keep my vinyl in the office.) As a specific example of case 1 from the music world: In 1967, jazz trombonist Urbie Green recorded an album called 21 Trombones, performed by the a choir of the best jazz trombone players in the world. When the idea was proposed, some were skeptical that so many in one place used to being top dog would cause friction; most of the best of anything have strong egos. In that case, everyone who came to play worked extraordinarily hard to impress the guy next to him with his ability to make the whole sound better. Since it's a two disk album, I suspect it took a couple weeks to complete the elbow to elbow studio work so it wasn't just a day or two of good behavior. It was a tough project.

But put two quarterbacks on the field at the same time and you are going to have fumbles. It will not work.

JMHO

In an experiment in a large architecture and engineering organization a few years back, we tried certain comparative incentives to attempt to drive higher performance.

A lack of trust between different parts of the organization meant that the "production" teams (composed of representatives of different disciplines or departments) ignored the market context on which a fee was based and a project won (they assumed that business development "sold" projects too cheaply and that "management" took a large share of the resource), and instead executed projects according to their individual departmental standards of excellence. We were, in other words, losing money because the measure of the "stars" was not the measure of the marketplace.

In our experiment, we offered the production teams the entire fee resource---"Here's the entire amount of money we can get for this project from this client. You, as a team, can keep for distribution among yourselves anything left over in your efficient execution of the project, but also must donate your time if you do not execute as needed."

None of the "top performers" accepted the challenge, expressing a resistance to their individual risk in accepting group responsibility for the actions and performance of others on the team.

In other words, is an organization around stars---if stars are not measured by their responsibility and effectiveness in engaging and motivating the performance of others---ever going to be a successful organization any more than an organization around mixed teams? Are there not lots of examples around of project-oriented, results-focused teams in which leadership inspires and delivers extraordinary performance (and growth and development) from teams of mixed capabilities? Isn't this a cultural matter (shared values that drive the larger organizational design and performance) more than a team organizational matter?

You pose a very interesting question about how best to assemble teams. The question however, begets another question, what makes a star performer. There are many thoughts on this, such as those with deep technical expertise, those with the best relationship capabilities, those who have the best networks. I had the opportunity to have completed something called a Belbin Team Role Profile, which is based on the research of Meredith Belbin, as part of lean six sigma training, and what I learned in that method was the fact that star performance for a team is driven by different types of roles people like to play in based on their natural proclivities. I would encourage you to check out: http://www.belbin.com/ to find out more about their research it might provide a better answer to your question.

Sam

You pose a very interesting question about how best to assemble teams. The question however, begets another question, what makes a star performer. There are many thoughts on this, such as those with deep technical expertise, those with the best relationship capabilities, those who have the best networks. I had the opportunity to have completed something called a Belbin Team Role Profile, which is based on the research of Meredith Belbin, as part of lean six sigma training, and what I learned in that method was the fact that star performance for a team is driven by different types of roles people like to play in based on their natural proclivities. I would encourage you to check out: http://www.belbin.com/ to find out more about their research it might provide a better answer to your question.

Sam

Interesting thoughts shared here. I'd like to know first how we define "top performers" because context is important here. Are we discussing individual contributors who have excelled with fantastic results, or we talking about "top performers" in those who have equally impressive management and leadership skills on top of everything else?

I've seen "top performers" who simply lack the requisite "soft skills" but yet are occupying positions of rank and authority that have the effect of a bull in a china closet.

My view is that team concepts win-out. If we take a basketball analogy, teams like the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs are far superior in results than those occupied by all-stars/Hall-of-Famers. Thus I think top performers must be seen in what is it that we're asking the person to do and in what situation - team effort of individual effort?

Thanks,

To concentrate or disperse talent?: It depends on the talent, how vast the discrepancies in talent are between the top and "lower tier", and the team task at hand among other factors. If the performance standards, expectations and work output of the "top tier" dwarfs others, top performers are forced to drop their bar, performance standards, and expectations for quality because others are not motivated but rather stymied and overwhelmed. There is high risk that if they do not, the top performers expectations will result in him/her being culturally banished from the team, operations may rather be orchestrated around that individual rather than using that individuals talents as a cornerstone for development. In such circumstances, talent is best concentrated until a more formal "development" program can be developed to raise the "bar" across the board. If not, talent is potentially waisted or worse yet will take flight from your organization.

It may also be best to concentrate talent for special pivot points or problems within corporate logistics or planning. This team approach may be akin to a special ops team that acts decisively, quickly, with outcomes focused on accuracy, efficacy and committment.

Dispersing talent is certainly necessary for further development and progress of teams on many levels. Just be mindful of which levels you are working with and gross mismatches in levels of performance.

I share this only as anecdotal insight

Robert Joseph PhD