The importance of great teams

Nov 11

AKA how to be worth more than a dime

Even if you're not a baseball fan, you most likely have heard of Babe Ruth. For the few that haven't, he's widely considered one of the greatest—if not the greatest—baseball players of all time.

In fact, in an article by Bleacher Report called "Baseball's Hallowed Marks: The 10 Most Unbreakable Records", after going through a number of singular achievements in slots 2-10, the Babe is listed at #1 as simply, "Everything Else". Here's what they write:

How could an article about the most unbreakable records not end with the greatest player’s greatest achievements? His records leave baseball historians shaking their heads. Ruth won a league record 12 home run crowns (one while primarily still a pitcher), was the first to 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 home run seasons, is second all-time in on-base percentage, first in slugging, first in OPS and second in at-bats per home run.

However it is his 1920 season (and not even his personal best) that ranks as the No. 1 unbreakable feat in baseball history. Babe Ruth slugged a record 54 home runs that year, again setting the single season record. What is even more amazing is that of the other 15 teams in the major leagues at the time, only one—ONE—topped what Ruth did as an individual. The Philadelphia Athletics hit 64 home runs, but their top two home run hitters failed to top 30 combined. Ruth more than doubled the total of five teams.

In the nine decades since the Roarin’ Twenties, players have gotten better and home run totals have risen, but no player—not Bonds, not Mays, not Aaron, not Pujols, not McGwire or Sosa in their steroid-fueled slug fest—has ever achieved hitting more home runs than any other team, much less all of them. It would be like Jose Batista hitting 215 home runs last year instead of 54.

Ok, so why all this blathering about sportsball?

What I'm really talking about here is individual greatness. It's important. And it's impressive. But perhaps what's more striking is that despite all his individual achievement, Babe Ruth had this to say about winning:

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” - Babe Ruth

I venture to say that given how much it costs to hire individual stars, if they're not playing together, the team will be worth significantly less than a dime.

The importance of being A Players and team players

One of the things I focus on most when hiring is building “talent density” by finding A players. The concept is from the book by Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings and business writer and professor Erin Meyer called "No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention".

In the book Hastings and Meyer write, "A fast and innovative workplace is made up of what we call 'stunning colleagues'—highly talented people, of diverse backgrounds and perspectives, who are exceptionally creative, accomplish significant amounts of important work, and collaborate effectively."

What can be missed in that quote is collaborate effectively.

Here's another one from the book: "For an individual to be deemed excellent she can’t just be amazing at the game; she has to be selfless and put the team before her own ego."

Most companies are trying to accomplish great things. At Versapay, where I work, we have a big mission: "To create a network that connects millions of companies and makes billing and payments easy for buyers and sellers."

The point Hastings and Meyer are making is clear. In order to accomplish big missions, you need A players for sure. But you also need to work together as a team.

If you don't, you’ll lose.

The five functions of a high-performing team

A while back, I read Pat Lencioni's "The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team" (here's a good summary of the book). It's a business fable, a made up story to highlight universal principles. In it he shares the story of a tech company that seemingly has everything going for it. Great market, high-profile leadership talent, a great product, and more. The problem is this company is not growing like it should.

The team, while talented, is dysfunctional. The book describes five ares where a team needs to thrive in order to be successful, each building on each other.

Trust

If a team doesn't trust one another, they'll never achieve results together. Trust is foundational because if you don't have trust, you can't disagree in a healthy way, commit even when you don't fully agree, and hold each other accountable for agreed upon results.

If you want to succeed in your mission, your first question on our teams should be, "Do we trust each other?" If the answer is no, it's time to begin the hard work of building that trust. This is especially important in a remote work environment where we don't interact as much as we normally would to build social bonds.

Conflict

This is hard for a lot of people because we don't like to rock the boat. But I'll tell you, you’re going to do great things as a company, people in the organization will have different opinions on how to get there. In fact, one of Hastings' marks of an A player is "diverse backgrounds and perspectives." Because of this, it's crucial you get good at healthy debate.

The best ideas are rarely birthed from group think. You need to poke and prod, push and pull. Netflix calls this "farm for dissent." As Hastings and Meyer writes, "The more you actively farm for dissent, and the more you encourage a culture of expressing disagreement openly, the better the decisions that will be made in your company. This is true for any company of any size in any industry."

You can see how these things build. If you don't trust your team, you'll never have this level of transparency in the way you communicate with one another.

Commitment

At some point, you have to make a call as a team. After all the back and forth of healthy debate, you need to move forward. Who does this? The project driver. The leader. That's her job. The team's job is to—agree or disagree—commit.

Commitment isn't about consensus. It's about knowing you were heard and considered. It's about showing up for the leader and the team when it's go time, even if you think there's a better way.

Obviously you can't do this if you don't trust and haven't had a healthy discussion.

Accountability

Once the team has committed, it's vital that everyone is held accountable—both for their contribution but ultimate to the goal itself.

Lencioni makes a point that individual achievements don't matter if the team doesn't achieve its results. Individual goals only matter if they ladder up to the team goals. And on an even bigger picture, team goals don't matter if they don't level up to the company goals.

This requires rigor. It means constantly reviewing performance and iterating when something isn't working. This is why in our performance meetings at Versapay, the questions we ask are:

What’s important,
How are you doing?
What priorities are there to improve?
Where do you need help?

If you haven't committed as a team, these accountability discussions turn into finger pointing. If you don't have healthy conflict, these discussions become toxic. If there is no trust, they don't happen at all. Well, actually they do, but behind your back.

Results

Finally, if you nail all of the above, results will come. But the is they have to be GROUP results, not just a collection of disparate individual results.

That's it folks. It's that simple...and, as you probably know, it's that hard. Because simple rarely equals easy.

Your teams will never be perfect. There is no reaching the horizon. Being a great team requires constant calibration across these five areas. If you’re faltering, fix it. If you’re nailing it, celebrate it. You’ll do both many times day in and day out. As my friend Tim Stahl recently said, "It's a process, not an event."

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Jake Johnson