The Perfect Team
I’d like to expend a few words about The Perfect Team.
My career in technology has taught me many things. Even now the lessons continue. Truly, refinement is achieved through continuous iterations to unlock innovations. So, perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned over the years is the concept of The Perfect Team.
The Perfect Team is disarmingly simple to define. The Perfect Team is one person to do it, one person to write it down, and one person to think ahead. So, if the definition of The Perfect Team sounds a bit like a minimum viable concept applied to innovation centers or ad hoc teaming — it is, in fact, just that by design.
The Perfect Team definition can be tested if you simply attempt to think through removal of any of the three key roles. Each role as a sole or sequestered activity is a far lesser contributor alone and yet together they comprise The Perfect Team.
For example, some might argue that the person to do it is all that is truly required. However, this do it only approach limits visibility and awareness of the person to write it down and forgoes cycles of thought to consider what should be done next by the person to think ahead. Such an isolation to only emphasize the person to do it is a common folly of so-called heroic culture companies that are often regarded as inconsistent in execution capability.
Think back on the teams you’ve been on and ask yourself if you had The Perfect Team. If you did not have The Perfect Team, what role was missing or not provided sufficient independence to work along side the other roles? Or, perhaps you did not have two roles?
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