How to Build a Successful Team? It May Mean Celebrating the Individual

Which is actually better, a great individual or a great team? On the one hand, we revere outstanding individuals: the quarterback, the actress, the rock star, the CEO. Yet, we are taught the value of teamwork. You can’t open a business magazine without getting advice on teambuilding, yet the cover inevitably displays the latest hotshot CEO. So, what gives? 

There is no doubt that teams are better for certain tasks. Take fast food, for example. For ten people to build 1,000 veggie burgers, we know it’s best to create an assembly line where each person completes a specific task for each burger. Simple tasks where everyone is qualified to do the job tend to be best completed by teams. 

Even for more complex tasks, good teams can be essential. Companies have executive teams, with each member possessing different expertise and responsibilities for different departments. Sports teams are typically composed of multiple great players but they only win if they act together as a team. Countries have multiple branches of government to create checks and balances. Our brains are composed of billions of neurons, all acting in concert to drive our minds. Termites act as teams without a leader, and have been found to build complex structures, cultivate agriculture, and create air-conditioned homes. Even religions are managed by teams of mortals. 

But there’s an important limit to what teams can do, and in these situations, a great individual is better than a good team. How many pretty good chess players would it take to beat Bobby Fisher? There is no number. How many average writers would it take to create something as good as one Shakespeare? Same story. 

Mark Zuckerberg once said that a great engineer is worth 100 average engineers. He was criticized for that statement, and surely an internet company the size of Zuckerberg’s needs hundreds of engineers. But his point was that engineering is more like chess than basketball. 

When it comes to genius, individuality is even more critical to success. Not only is the value of a great individual more than the sum of a dozen mediocre minds in this case, but the value of a great individual can be better than that of a team of great individuals. A team of geniuses can often do more harm than good and destroy the value of a great individual. 

It seems obvious that mediocre minds can destroy the contribution of a great mind, but it is equally true that great teams can destroy the contribution of a great mind. A second sculptor cutting into Michelangelo’s David, for example, would have caused massive destruction, even if the artist were Leonardo Davinci. 

Whether to use a group or an individual for a particular endeavor has remained elusive, but a recent scientific theory offers to provide the missing explanation: the critical brain hypothesis. It’s complicated—even more so than most brain science—but the principle is related to peak performance, or what athletes describe as “being in the zone.” The general idea is that the brain is always operating at a transition point between two phases. In one phase, activity reduces rapidly, and in the other, it increases in a burst called a neuronal avalanche. 

The brain’s neural network activity ebbs and flows, transitioning between peaks and valleys. In this way, insight, creativity, and performance also ebb and flow, and ultimately hit a breakpoint and peak. At the peak of a neuronal avalanche is where brain processing is highest. 

Individuals experience bursts of peak performance but groups operate differently. The reason for this is that peak performance happens within a system (within an individual’s brain for instance), not across systems (across multiple brains). Individuals peak, but groups compromise, ultimately coming to a consensus. 

So groups are good for consensus building, decision making, even idea generation. But they’re not as good when it comes to pushing the boundaries of our imagination, whether it be through innovation, industry, or art. To push the ball forward, teams are often best. But to create the ball, that takes a brilliant individual. In this regard, Walt will always outperform Disney, Henry will always outperform Ford, and Michael will always outperform Dell.

Note: A version of this article was first published in USA Today, but because of the importance of the subject matter, we felt it was worth including on Linkedin, where we tend to get more feedback and a lively discussion.