How to build your winning team

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Most of us have the standard answers like a police officer or pilot. But in the last decade or so, there’s one job I’ve been fascinated by.

Formula 1 team principal.

Hear me out: it seems like this perfect cocktail of leadership and management. Of big goals and small steps. Of strategy and theatre. Of high performance and one clear purpose. Of engineering and psychology.

The list goes on.

There’s not one specific thing, but the combo seems like one hell of a job.

Now, I didn’t marry a Spice Girl and I don’t swear every other sentence in a thick German accent, so I probably don’t qualify.

But one can dream, right?

Apart from dreaming, we can also learn from them.

You see… Everything these guys do is in public. Especially since Netflix launched their hit series Drive to Survive (I totally binge-watched the new season in a weekend).

And while I won’t spoil the fun for those with more self-control, there was a storyline in there that I’ve seen play out in so many project teams that I had to write about it.

Here’s the thing:

We both know that one of the biggest decisions you make for your project is getting the right people on your team.

F1 is no different.

Selecting drivers is one of the biggest decisions a team principal makes.

In the latest series, Alpine’s team principal Otmar Szafnauer gets asked about that in a guest lecture at Columbia Business School.

Otmar’s initial answer is the obvious one: “You want the fastest driver”.

And then he pauses for a second, about to add something important. I was on the edge of my seat…

“But they also have to be available”.

No sh*t Otmar. Is that all there’s to it? He seems to think so. And Netflix agrees, as that’s the end of the segment.

Here’s the thing: even if the fastest drivers are available, that’s not always the best solution.

The same goes for other sports.

Michael Jordan would be nowhere without Scottie Pippen. Or the other way around: a team of 5 Michael Jordan’s would be a terrible idea.

Something about multiple cooks in the kitchen, or more than one captain…

And that’s where Otmar seems to have missed it. He met his own criteria when he selected his two drivers. They were fast and available.

But they also had a 20-year feud…

And as you can probably guess, that didn’t make a great team.

In fact, it blew up into a million pieces of carbon fiber, and it cost Otmar his job.

The same also goes for your project team.

You define your project, align your stakeholders, and then you assemble your team.

You want your equivalent of the fastest drivers that are available: for every task, you want someone who gets it, wants it, and has capacity.

But we both know you need more than that.

You need a cohesive team.

People that work well together. That put their collective energy into attacking a problem instead of each other.

Because when a project goes south, it’s rarely down to one individual. It’s usually some kind of team dynamic.

There’s no trust, people are not transparent, or they’re not helping each other proactively.

Now don’t get me wrong…

I’m not saying that you should act like a preschool teacher who only puts kids who like each other in the same group of chairs.

But I do urge you to put team cohesiveness high on your list of selection criteria. And if it doesn’t work out, you must have a conversation about it.

Fortunately, Netflix has you covered in the same series. Similar issue, a different team, a different approach, and a very different outcome.

I won’t say more - go watch episode 8 around minute 24.

Thanks for the example, Fred.

Next time you assemble a project team, think about it for a second. Does 1+1 equal 3 here, or am I setting myself up for internal trouble?

Considering that for a minute early on might save your project. Or as in Otmar’s case, your job.

Thank me later.

Talk soon,
Jasper