How to build a winning team: Avengers & Perspectives
Build your teams like the Avengers for wider perspectives and unlimited ability.
Over my career, I have been a part of great teams, I have led transitioning teams, rebuilt teams, and started from scratch with new teams as well. Therefore, I wanted to share…
One of the key approaches I have found to work, time and time again, is
the focus on different perspectives and diversification of thought.
The easiest way of communicating this to others, is assembling my own team of Avengers. Building teams based on diverse characters, differing strengths and areas of interest, and various experiences. The uniforms are optional.
I use this approach to internal teams, but also my collaboration works across Industrials, Universities, Trade Groups and even Government Catapult works.
Why perspectives matter…
If I built my team around people that had similar skills, similar background and similar approaches, we may well be amazing at very select subject matter areas. However, they almost certainly wont be fantastic across a wide range of challenges. By having a diverse team with differing perspectives, you truly open up the ability to access different thinking, different approaches, and have constructive conversations to tackle new challenges.
In one particular example, for a new team, I had the opportunity of recruiting early and finding a second member to start the team. In order to start the ‘Avengers approach’ I sought out a very different member to the skill set, perspective and background as myself. They were very well respected in the Industry and could bring a very constructive opinion to the works immediately. This balanced out the quick team of two, and setup the foundations of the team unbelievably well. The further recruitment of the team continued to seek out SMEs from varied backgrounds and skill sets. This meant some internal recruits and some external. The team evolved into one of the most successful teams I had been apart of, and continues to be successful to this day, years later.
By successful, I really do mean successful. The team moved from a fairly immature start-up team through to what is now recognised as strategically important to the success of the company.
Its also worth mentioning that just because the perspectives and people are different, great teams are all still aligned to a common goal — just like the Avengers. Its also worth noting that even the Avengers can have conflicting opinions (think Cap vs Iron man), and situational leadership plays a big part in balancing over time.
Adapt, evolve and rebuild when required…
Once the team is assembled, its also important to know that the team of Avengers wont be around forever (check the comics, or films if you don't believe me). Team members change, leaders change and environments evolve. These changes overtime will naturally mean that the balance of culture, differences, backgrounds etc may shift, its then imperative that recruitment looks to rebalance and reshape to account for this. The ideal way for this is to continually have a view on talent pipeline, and being involved in the pipeline directly — this could be through coaching, mentoring or generally communicating with future prospects for the team.
