Monday, January 13, 2014

Picking the Right Players

When you are assembling a team for an important project, how do you select the team members?  Do you select individual star performers in your organization?   How does that work out for you?  Recall, for a moment, one of the many great scenes in the movie Miracle, about the 1980 U.S. Men's Olympic Hockey team.  In that movie, Coach Herb Brooks talks with one of his assistants at the end of tryouts.  The assistant is incredulous.  He questions Brooks, wondering how he could have made some of the selections that he has made.  The assistant does not think that Brooks has assembled the most talented team possible.  Brooks responds that they won't win if he picks the best players.  He has to pick the right players.  In other words, he could not just assemble an all-star team.  He needed to find people with the right mindset and attitude.  He needed to fill certain roles.  He needed players with complementary skillsets.  

Are you picking your teams in the manner employed by Coach Brooks, or you trying to put together an all-star team?  You might think about that scene from Miracle the next time you have to staff a very important project at work. 

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