Building the perfect team

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By Innocent Mushamba

INVESTING in a perfect marketing team is one of the smart moves that smoothens the growth stage and it lays a foundation for a strong brand.

In the light of that, what would you do if had to build the perfect marketing team at the risk of losing your life if you didn’t? If you had a gun held to your head, and the holder wanted a perfect team to let you live, what would you do? If you had the opportunity to hire or re-allocate people into the team, what traits would you consider the most?

In fact, let’s take a little pop quiz:

The most skilled people
The most experienced people.
The most innovative bunch.
The most emotionally intelligent

Which one would you choose?

A few years ago, Google embarked on some research to find out just how feasible it would be to be the perfect team. It’s called Project Aristotle.

The idea was to see if there was a way to come up with a flawless team within an organisation. The conclusion was that it all had nothing to do with the calibre of people in the team.

Speaking about this project, Abeer Dubey, a manager in Google’s People Analytics division, commented: “We looked at 180 teams from all over the company. We had lots of data, but there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.’’

So what matters then? What makes the most successful teams in the current marketplace? What did Google find? They found that the number one factor in determining the success of any given team is psychological safety. Put simply, team members feel safe taking risks in front of each other.

There is no fear of vulnerability. It’s okay to try and fail because there will be no marginalization. Do you get the picture?

Great teams aren’t great because they have great people. Great teams are great because they can work together, and get things done.

As entrepreneurs, we can only build great teams when everybody is working in an environment that is safe to “try”. Build that culture, and the right people will come.