Building the 'perfect' Team

Does perfection exist? Someone would state: maybe yes, in nature. Then, why to target perfection when building a Team? Simple, because targeting perfection would bring an outcome which resemble to the picture on the side: strong cohesion, with assured performance, minimizing the faults and/or risks.

Building the likely perfect Team is often translated as the ability to hire the best candidate for the role/position. Defining the best candidate is tough, as it encompasses a serie of variables to be taken into consideration: skills, attitude, personality and actual Team members are a few of the most important ones since, often, budget constraints come into play too.

Looking at the hiring process from the right standpoint/perspective is something of a vital importance for successful organizations. Process, as well as skills, previous experiences and psychology are as many pillars to take into consideration, and at the end of the day the right mix of them is a final outcome that ensures a certain degree of flawlessness.

The process

Building a Team is one of the most challenging tasks in any organization; Leaders asked to accomplish the task are responsible for a process which is complex, long and forward-looking.

Complexity. Sourcing, screening, assessing and eventually deciding are all complex tasks, without any doubt. Sourcing candidates matching the openings consists first in looking at the profiles on the market, and second in checking the interest towards the proposed position/role. Screening candidates interested in the position/role consists first in matching desired hard and soft skills, and second in selecting the most promising ones. Assessing candidates successful at the screening phase consists first in modulating the process, and second in implementing it. Deciding which candidate among the successful ones is the right fit, for sure, consists first in having multiple interviewers, and second scoring the feedback according to the most suited evaluation criteria.

Timing. It is all about the timing (i.e. when the search starts) and the contextual market conditions/conjectures. No matter how challenging or rewarding the positions/roles backing the openings are, if the market in the specific timeframe does not offer quality profiles, the process can get long, and longer: sourcing and screening phases are effective only when implemented on large databases of applicants and reaching the desired quota (i.e. number of profiles to be taken into consideration before to move forward) may be challenging by itself.

Forward-looking. The overall process is forward-looking, by nature. Sourcing, screening, assessing and deciding are all thought for anticipating and/or forecasting an ideal working environment in which the candidates are projected in various mental/formal simulations.

Skills, Experiences and Psychology

Normally, openings and respective positions/roles specify requirements in terms of hard and soft skills, intended as the technical skills to accomplish the tasks, and the interpersonal skills to work within a Team. To these functional requirements, others may be added up: non-functional requirements are typically identified in the attitude and personality of the candidates, both attributes compared to the actual Team members'.

Attitude (dynamic). Changing with experiences and so maturity, it is really how an individual behaves at a certain point in time and it is supposed to change with different people, events and places.

Personality (static). Built since the early ages of the life, it concerns what kind of emotions, thoughts and qualities an individual holds which stay all through the life.

Building diversity, and letting diversity work out well encompass deep analysis on attitude and personality of the individuals to make sure that an overall equilibrium is eventually reached out: for instance, a Team entirely composed by Type A personalities cannot work out, as well as a Team entirely composed by Type B, instead the right mix of Type A and B can ensure a balance and the right dose of elasticity (Type A pull, and Type B push back). Unfortunately, attitude and personality are peculiar characteristics which may be investigated only in advanced phases of the hiring process: often there is the risk to move the strong candidates in the process, without having any possibility to test attitude and personality out (prerogative of face-to-face interviews).

Skills are normally developed on the career path, and individuals with comparable level of experience may show up different levels of maturity for equivalent skills. Interpersonal skills are developed like technical skills: as the time passes, and the career advances, more there is exposure to interpersonal setups (e.g. inter-team meetings and/or workshops and/or projects), the more these skills grow up, meaning that senior people are more likely to have sharp communication, empathy and self-awareness which are all prerogatives for leaderships and mentoring roles. As for attitude and personality, finding out which mix of hard and soft skills is needed in a candidate consists in an assessment process that is fortunately implemented since the first stages: sourcing, screening and assessing can all provide strong signals and such signals should be correctly evaluated.

The right mix

The quest to build the 'perfect' Team... this might be a title for an entire book. Am I wrong? ...

What if we consider such a quest from a practical and quantitative perspective? Meaning, what if we try to combine the above said variables into a model with an objective function which points to the minimization of the risks (intended as hiring false positive)?

Back to the point of functional and non-functional requirements, looking at the entire process as at a decision problem in which candidates' skills are matched to the job description, and candidates' attitude and personality are matched to the actual Team, then everything looks like to be simpler to dominate. Applicants should be categorized as falling into one of these categories: Beginner (e.g. fresh graduates or 0 year of experience on the job), Junior (e.g. 1 to 3 years of experience on the job), Experienced (e.g. 3 to 7 years of experience on the job), Senior (e.g. 7 to 15 years of experience on the job), Expert (e.g. 15 and more of experience on the job). The job profile should be classified into one of these categories, and required skills should be tailored accordingly: from a Senior profile is expected leadership, drive, empathy and self-awareness, as well as effective communication for any mentoring and supervisory activity; a Junior profile is more likely an individual contributor which is only supposed to shine for the technical abilities (intended as the effectiveness to deliver as tasked). The actual Team composition should be then reviewed to understand what kind of attitude and personality the applicant should demonstrate: often, pure intellectual jobs (e.g. base research) do not require very high level of interactions and collaborations, so Type A may be hired with no risks at all (worst case, they will be self-driving and pushing hard on their own ambitious tasks) and in terms of attitude if cooperation is not a strength, well, this may be tolerated too. On the other hand, Type B with high positive and collaborative attitude might be preferred whenever the Team is supposed to work cohesively against goals, and it already has key people or Leaders.

As simple as described above, listing the attributes and skills, comparing with the expected requirements and eventually scoring results to be a systematic process to tackle a hard problem, with the aim to find a likely right mix of desired characteristics in the screened candidates. There is no math proof for the correctness of such a process; clearly, experiences show that it can be considered effective and relatively time-savvy: it is not a rule of thumb approach, it is quantitative and logical, it resembles the classical decision making processes adopted in other workflows and, moreover, let the psychology play its own game which is an extremely important aspect, all in all.

Conclusion

As in the preamble, summarizing with a famous quote:

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence - V. Lombardi

As in all business practices, minimizing the risks by applying quantitative and data-driven decision making may be considered as a way of achieving operational excellence. Hiring processes support the operations providing the skilled workforce, so minimizing the risks in such circumstances directly reflects in minimizing the risks in operations. Smoothing the criticality of a complex process like the hiring has to be intended as a priority objective, and to achieve it a supportive quantitative workflow should be put in place. Letting functional and non-functional requirements play the game, being evaluated with a systematic approach, it is for sure a structured way to target perfection in the implementation: clearly, chasing the perfection will bring a quest for excellence, and excellence means reducing the risks which are directly related, in the specific case, to the operations of the business as well as its execution.

Concluding, chasing the perfection and so targeting the excellence in building the Teams sounds like the prerogative to build strong Teams, with high level of cohesion and assured performances; such kind of Team represents the reliable engine of any business and it is able to drive the success, no matter the sector.