The 2008 Dallas Cowboys started out as one of the early Super Bowl predictions, but quickly fell apart as the season progressed. At the end of the regular season, they were labeled as one of the greatest disappointments in the entire league, even more than the 0-16 Detroit Lions. As one reporter from Yahoo said, "Dallas was a fantasy team coming to life this season. (Jerry) Jones kept adding stars without concern for chemistry. He expected them to coexist, cooperate, and conquer..."
Early on, I saw the Cowboys as a group of individually talented players, but not a talented team. With every game it seemed that the individuals stood out more than the team itself. Interestingly enough, none of them made my fantasy football team either, which is probably why I dominated my league. Listen, I know that larger-than-life personalities are common in the types of games with high-risk and high-rewards and those personalities can bring incredible value, but there was something different about these guys. They just didn't stand together.
One thing I routinely preach to my clients is to hire for strength. Jerry Jones might have achieved that at individual levels, but forgot two other critical factors:
- Will their weakness be a detriment to the team? In other words, can we supply strength in another area to supplement the weakness of this individual?
- Will they 'fit' with the team? This is more than merely cultural fit, because it also embraces what I'll refer to as 'like talent.' An example would be comparable Emotional Intelligence, athletic ability, or even IQ. Most often in the business world, I find that EQ is the differentiating factor.
Developing strong teams in business is not so different than this example from the NFL. Many teams that should perform better simply don't because of disconnects that likely began somewhere in the hiring process. Talented teams win games, no matter if it's the gridiron or the marketplace. Plain and simple.
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Joseph-
ReplyDeleteOnce again I think you make a great point, organizations like sports teams win or lose ultimately because of their synergy or the lack of it. Rarely is one individual so talented that they can prevail by themselves.
It is interesting what we can learn from the animal kingdom- in herd animals or pack animals separation from the group "lack of cultural fit" isn't tolerated and can very well lead to the death of the individual animal- there is zero tolerance for a member who can't live within the group norms. Perhaps they recognize something we don't.....