“Find me a great team and I’ll find a way we can make money.”
I can’t recall where I heard it, but that statement has been ruminating in my mind ever since.
When it comes to building a great team, I definitely overthink it. I don’t know any other way to do it. You can read the stories on team building and you’ll hear the same core elements. The authors make it all seem quite trivial, although anyone with experience buildling great teams understands it’s not. In fact, the greatest team builders the world has ever known would tell you it’s the most difficult thing they’ve ever done (or not done).
For companies, the exercise of building teams becomes more interesting when the talent supply is tight due to the pressures of historic low employment rates and less people training and educating themselves to enter certain trades or professions. This reality forces leadership teams to get creative and the competition it breeds in the marketplace is a good thing for everybody.
We’re building a great team here at Simlogi and it’s extremely challenging and extremely fascinating at the same time. I am someone that thrives on team dynamics because the power of team execution inspires me: Challenges, ideas, wrong turns, right turns, improvements, solutions, outcomes, wins, losses. I find it all motivating.
Most of us have been on great teams and on not so great teams. The great truth is that lessons from teams (good and bad) are lessons for life. Lessons about yourself, your weakness, your strength, your vulnerability, your pain, your objectivity, your perserverance, your failure, your success. Don’t miss the lessons that teamwork has to offer you for life; the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Great teams break thresholds. As if that’s not inspiring enough.