Hidden Talents, Winning Teams (summary)
Get the right people on the bus, and in the right seats
To close out our series on how we can build high-performing teams by looking for talent in unexpected places, let’s provide a summary of the series:
In Part 1, we introduced PJ Tucker and Roberto Firmino, a basketball player and soccer player who were both successful despite mediocre abilities in what are ostensibly the most important elements of their roles. We asked why their teams not only kept them around but achieved outstanding success with them, despite these obvious limitations.
In Part 2, we answered this question by introducing “threshold theory” and how it relates to team building. The main idea is that, after a certain level of ability in the core skill of a role, greater ability is often no longer as central to success as the presence of other, secondary skills. We looked at the research in IQ, the career outcomes of students from an elite high school, and an analysis from the Harvard Business Review of the performance of CEO’s to further explore this phenomenon and its implications.
In Part 3, we continued to talk about basketball but moved our attention to last year’s Boston Celtics, who won the NBA championship. We considered why most pundits picked against them in the NBA finals, despite the statistical odds pointing heavily in their favor. We also explored why they were so successful, positing that their lack of any “weak links” with regards to the most important basketball skills allowed them to play in a way other teams–all of whom had some weak links–could not. We then discussed the implications of this lesson for corporate teams, looking at McKinsey & Co. and Southwest Airlines as examples of companies that include specific skills that all employees must share, in order to avoid allowing “weak links” to reduce the performance of the whole.
In Part 4, we drilled down on one of the Boston Celtics’ players, guard Derrick White, and introduced a phenomenon we named the “Reverse Peter Principle.” As it sounds, this principle is the opposite of the commonly understood Peter Principle, in which a person “rises to the level of their incompetence.” In this case, individuals like Derrick White move to more and more difficult roles and perform better in each new environment. We question why that happens, and whether it can be predicted.
In Part 5, we introduce two other examples of the Reverse Peter Principle, in business and politics: Howard Shultz and Winston Churchill. We begin to answer the questions raised in Part 4, pointing out that we can improve as we move into ostensibly more challenging roles if our skill set and mentality is a better fit for the demands of these new roles than it was for the previous roles.
In Part 6, we conclude by looking at the implications of this phenomenon for business leaders, focusing on three important things leaders should consider as they build teams. First, look more broadly for potential leaders. Second, be humble and realize that our own assessments of who will succeed are often flawed. Third, avoid assuming that the top performer at one level is the best choice to move into a role at a higher level. Instead, look for who has best demonstrated the required skills for the new role–even if that person’s overall performance in their current role is below some of their colleagues.
In his classic work, “Good to Great,” Jim Collins emphasizes the importance of “getting the right people on the bus,” and “getting them in the right seats,” noting that this is both essential to business success and easier said than done. We hope that this series has provided some valuable insights and a fresh perspective into how you, as a leader, can do that more effectively.
Thanks,
The Impactful Executive Team
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