Sandy's Soapbox
I heard of a NASA advisory challenge from Miles O'Brien (relayed to me via LittleSDO): "If you were creating an all-star team to help NASA improve its efforts in education and outreach, whom would you select?" Various readers (including myself) submitted some names, including Neal deGrasse Tyson, Barbara Morgan, Phil Platt. All "A-list" advocates for the cause, definitely all-star material.
But a team of such all-stars would, in a word, fail. I think 'all-star' teams run the same problem as assuming a group of world leaders will tackle progressive issues, a 'smartest men in the room' team of CEOs will make a balanced fiscal policy, or a bunch of comp sci PhDs will design a good social network. You might get lucky, but wouldn't it make more sense to build a team rather than a collection of high-performing individuals?
The 'dream team' concept is the cousin of the "Bell the Cat tale". In "Bell the Cat", a bunch of mice get together and decide, for safety, they need to put a bell on the cat and *poof* no more mice get eaten. A great plan, until someone asks, 'but who will bell the cat'?
Well, Dream Teams can run into the same lack of result, for opposite reasons. All the alpha mice will either a) fight each other to be the one to bell the cat, or b) expect that, having decided on action, some subordinate mice will be assigned. Neither of which is a good use for an all-star mouse.
A true dream team needs to use D&D as a model. This is not a new concept, even I've written on 'Running a business as an old-style D&D party'. But new or old, it's a warning often ignored. You need a mix of skills and personality types to have a successful team. "Diversity" isn't just a buzzword, it's a concept that says, hey, maybe having five identical people deciding what to do isn't necessarily the most robust approach.
The best overview on teaming, I think, is the "Five Man Band" writeup from "TVTropes", originally authored by Michael Fiegel (Aeonite). Excerpted, it reads "The Five Man Band is a group of characters whose members fall into archetypes which all complement one another. They are a very specific team with skills that contribute to the group in a unique way."
Adapting that a bit, the first role is the Hero, a charismatic and driven lead, or what we typically think of when we think 'all-star'. Teams need a leader, and they need someone with drive. But they also need other types.
You next have the Lieutenant, a second in command, more level-headed, the pramatist. That's the type of person who tends to get ignored during awards, because they're always on time and on budget, rather than racing to fix disasters. Being high profile isn't always good, sometimes you just need a maintainer, who gets the job done without fanfare.
Add in the Smart One, as a resource and to keep your options open. And the Strong Guy, someone able to do what others consider 'grunt work'-- a person who likes that sort of thing is gold for any team.
And finally the Peacekeeper, your team-oriented person who helps keep the group together, and handles external issues that come up, a sort of ombudsman/big picture person.
Take those five and you have a potent, viable team. In business, this could be Manager, Sales, IT, Finance, and HR. In science, Scientist, Post-Doc, Professor, Sys Admin, and Administrator. There's a dozen ways to mix it and you're not limited to five, the key is to have a diverse mix of talents and types.
As an example, my choices for a NASA outreach 'all-star' team would be: Neil Tyson or Barbara Morgan out front, Kari Bean & Chris Giersch on web, Stephanie Stockman & Zoe Frank for policy and ops, Phil Platt as minister without portfolio. This example is worthwhile in showing the difficulty of picking a team. My choices lack a video person, because I don't know of any. And the picks I made are from that subset of individuals I am aware of. That's a big problem in team-forming-- finding out about who is really doing 'the real work' in the field.
Once you get past the block of wanting "just like me, only moreso", you have the challenge of recognizing talent. Often the best 'team players' are the people you don't hear about in the usual top-heavy newsletters. Unless you're recruiting for a role requiring high visibility and lots of networking, you want to skip the people who are always out in front, and look for 'good worker bees' instead. The way to identify a good worker? Their managers don't want to part with them.
To form a team, move past star culture and look at who has been on successful projects. Not "projects that survived catastrophe", not 'heroic efforts', but stuff that used to be called 'business as usual', before that became a pejorative. Crises can bring out the best in folks, but are best avoided entirely. Crunch weeks can build character, but are a poor judge of consistent effort. The true way to track a team is sustained success over time. That's really the only metric that matters.
Say you're offered Aragorn, Roland and Beowulf for a team.. who to choose? You might skip Roland, hero of Renaissance literature, who could fight as well as a hundred men... because he got into that situation through egotism and misjudging his enemies. You might want to pass on Aragorn, also, despite him being undistilled awesomeness, since he did bopped around Middle Earth as a heroic slacker for decades until finally stepping up to the plate. Of the three heroes mentioned earlier, only Beowulf really had the 'team' thing done, leading Thanes and, when they faltered, still retaining the loyalty of Wiglaf.
So the next time your job starts running seminars on 'Diversity Training', don't think of it as buzzword bingo, but as a poor attempt at achieving what we tabletop and MMO players already know. And step on up and let them know your take on things. We've been doing this longer than them.
Until next month,
Sandy
here each month, and twice/weekly at ScientificBlogging
