Latest Op Ed: Teamwork: The Power of Won
Many thanks to Founderswire.com for publishing my latest Op Ed on Teamwork: Working together successfully and the difference between doers and thinkers. The original post is here and an abstract follows below.
Greg
In corporate America, to actually get something done, you need a strong team. In startups, the problem is even more acute, given staffing constraints. Consistent forward progress is the goal, and an individual can’t ever do it all. Whether in a boardroom or an incubator, business success is a team sport.
The textbooks go one step further, touting the merits of being cross-functional, in order to be high performing. Conspicuously absent from this logic, however, is the personnel composition. The best teams have one person tapped as the ultimate leader, but then move to highly specialized roles in order to better achieve implementation. This is where quarterbacks add value beyond just leadership: knowing how to staff a group, and make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
When assembling a team, I blend doers and thinkers. Doers focus on business development, with an eye toward implementation; the people who pound the pavement, bringing ideas from concept to fruition. Their peers are thinkers—executives who maintain a strong vision and blend the different parts of a company together strategically. One personality type isn’t better or worse than the other. It’s surrounding yourself with people who are unlike you, to create management chemistry.
