Every day, we hear about people who are examples of the values we strive to live by. Good Samaritans helping their fellow humans without the need for recognition. People who are willing to work with people they don’t know and be open to new experiences and knowledge.
We live and work amongst great collaborators who have a thirst for growth and accomplishment, and who generally aren’t loners. Generally, they want to be part of something larger than themselves and have the courage to act upon their desires to help and work together. They need to be part of a team and there is no larger team, yet, than humanity itself. We have great collaborators in our every day work environments as well. Team members who reach out to each other and want to help build something together. What is the link to heroes you ask? Good teams don’t need heroes. Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls started winning championships when there were more people for him to pass to and who could take accountability to produce more points and help on defense. When Jordan was the hero, they couldn’t beat the better teams down the stretch.
In team sports, and work is definitely a team sport in most instances, a team provides synergy where the sum of everyone working together is greater than the sum of the individual parts. This is the magic behind projects that deliver without a fuss and don’t need last minute heroes to swoop in from above to save the day. They work together day in and day out to deliver high quality. If there are issues, they are worked through as a team without the need to involve anyone higher up in the hierarchy. This is the basis for Agile and Scrum frameworks. The team is accountable and takes that accountability seriously. They are professionals who’s only requirement from above is consistent support for the cause.
The downside of being professionals that deliver quietly without bringing systems down and needing intervention from above, or involving “ninjas”, “gurus” or other heroes is that the teams often don’t get the high profile recognition. See When We Recognize The Wrong Things for more on this. A team that does their job as a team will outperform those that do it as individuals. This is nothing new, but we constantly need to remind ourselves of this as we continue to live in a world of individual performance evaluations that require us to validate what we have done personally to ensure the success of the business, which is a team. The dichotomy here is untenable, but we have yet to get executive buy-in, so we continue to live with it.
If one person could do it all, we wouldn’t need enterprises with tens of thousands of people in them. But we DO need businesses with many thousands of people who each provide part of the whole to deliver great services for our customers. We need those people to work together and provide them with the tools and support that MAKE IT EASY TO WORK TOGETHER. If we can do this well, there are no limits.
A few years ago, I heard a comment from a leader that came during evaluation time. A time when high profile projects get a big piece of the conversation time and where those who came to the rescue get a lot of recognition. He said “if your project needed to bring in a hero, someone didn’t do their job”. This resonated with me, big time. Given I was working on projects that were quietly delivering and getting great results, the team working together and talking every day, backing each other up and bringing in the right people at the right time and defending the need to do things right, not just fast and cheap, I was very happy to hear it. This leader has a team that we don’t hear too much about, but they are bullish defenders of doing the right thing and making their systems stable and reliable. They get it. You can see that they get it from their low turnover and consistent delivery. They don’t do heroics. They don’t need to. We should all learn from that.
We don’t need heroes. We need great teams that work together and support each other. We are better when we work together. Corny but true. I hope your teams support one another to deliver great results together. If so, you are well on your way to having a team of non-heroes who wear their one very large cape in unison.
In computer networks, connectivity is key. If your computer is not connected to a network, you are pretty limited. The amount you can do is generally proportional to the nodes you can talk to. This is the beauty and power of the internet. Our work and personal lives are the same. We need people around us, some close and some farther away, to do great things.
No Pants - Thoughts & Inspiration 