The Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Find Lasting Success by Rich Karlgaard

Author:Rich Karlgaard [Karlgaard, Rich]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781118898079
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-03-23T14:00:00+00:00

THREE ESSENTIALS: CHEMISTRY, PASSION, AND GRIT

Getting team chemistry right is essential to high performance. But that’s not news, so let’s get to the hard part. How can you tell if someone will make a good team member? What kind of screening can you use? In the corporate world, we haven’t seen many meaningful advances since the advent of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test—in the middle of the last century!

Sure, there are more recent cognitive or thinking-styles tests like the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument, Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Theory, and the Five Factors Personality Test, but the effectiveness of each is debatable. The explosion of big data and analytical tools has not yet produced much good insight on how to staff and manage high-performance teams.

The U.S. military, by contrast, uses training and testing to find out pretty quickly how a person fits in. The military, and especially the Special Forces, used to put a big premium on pedigree. Did you attend one of the three academies? Did you rank in the top quartile? Do you have a high IQ, high test scores, and excellent grades?

But the military found that those types of standards didn’t necessarily correlate to strong performance under fire. And that drove the creation of training exercises that mimic the extreme conditions of an operating theater. For example, Bill Owens—a retired Navy admiral and former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs—told me that one of the last things they do in Navy SEAL Team 6 training is to fly over a body of water at jet altitude, nearly thirty thousand feet, and have candidates throw their inflatable rafts out the door. Then they jump out of the plane, pull the parachute, and, in the dark water, assemble all the pieces they need to get ashore and accomplish their mission. It may seem extreme, but that’s the way it really works when stuff hits the fan.

But in the corporate world, we can’t ask prospective employees to jump out of a plane, right? Well, maybe some people can, but most of us still need to resort to other techniques. Which puts enormous pressure on team leaders to do an exceptional job recruiting and choosing team members. From my interviews and discussions, I discovered a few things you should look for in a team member.

Eric Edgecumbe, chief operating officer at Specialized Bicycles, a global leader in high-end bicycles and bike gear, looks for commitment and a background in team sports. “To me, it’s that selfless committing to the goal of the team. When I interview people I always ask them, ‘Did you play any team sports in high school or college?’ Tell me what you liked about being on a team; what you didn’t like about being on a team.”

Mike Sinyard, the founder of Specialized, believes you’ve got to passionately love your product. So you can’t work at Specialized unless you love biking. Period. Is this fair? Why not? It’s a bike company! You should love bicycles if you want to work there. And don’t try to fake it.

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