What happens when you create a team of top performers?

A large Australian company has recently created a small subsidiary with a highly “Agile” organisation design and funding model focussing on leveraging the latest technology to remain competitive in a market that is being disrupted. Creating highly agile subsidiaries with startup culture is an effective intrapreneurship tactic that is used by many large organisations globally in disrupted markets.

To ensure achieving the best results this organisation has placed some of their best performers in this subsidiary. I have recently heard news that this subsidiary is not actually performing well and they are failing in a number of initiatives.

This came to me as a surprise. As an Agile Coach who has been advocating for agile funding models, lean organisation design, and intrapreneurship I was expecting this subsidiary to be performing exceptionally well and deliver exceptional results very quickly. Then I realised there is a very subtle but super important factor that has been overlooked here.

This organisation has attempted to build a high performing team by placing their high performing individuals in that team. My hypothesis is when you build a team of high performing individuals within an organisation that team will not perform well at all.

Simon Sinek in this video talks about how the US Navy SEALs pick the guys who go on the SEAL Team Six. The SEAL Team Six is the A-Team, they are the elites, they are the best of the best of the best of the best. The SEALs consider two factors when deciding who gets in the SEAL Team Six. One is performance and the other is trust. Performance is their skills and how they perform on the battlefield. And trust is what kind of person they are off the battlefield. The way the SEALS put is “I may trust you with my life, but do I trust you with my money and my wife?”… they’re SEALs!

Obviously, nobody wants the low performer low trust people, and everybody wants the high performer high trust people. But the interesting fact is they would prefer a low performer high trust person to a high performer low trust person. They have learned that a high performer low trust person is a toxic leader and a toxic team member.

If you go on a team and ask who’s always got your back and you trust more than anybody else, they will all point to the same person, the high trust person, and he/she may not be the highest performing person individually. 

My hypothesis is when organisations want to create an “A-team” most likely it will be the high performer low trust people who put their hands up to join the A-team. The high trust people would think twice before leaving their team to join this new cool club.

Let’s do a thought experiment together. Let's imagine we are in an organisation under delivery pressure and competing priorities with a system which is not designed for “agile”. We are trying to keep unity and the team spirit high. Within the team we are good friends, and we got each other’s back. Life is difficult but we know the project work has to be done and we need to push through.

Then let's imagine suddenly an opportunity opens up for top performers to join an A-team to work on this awesome project. Who is more likely to leave their mates behind in the mess and go join this new cool camp?

• The people who are low on the trust scale, who feel a victim of the system and feel their talents are being wasted here.
• The people who are high on the trust scale who care about their mates and would think twice what is going to happen to their mates and the project if I leave the team.

I would argue the high trust high performers will most likely stay back because they know their mates need them here and the pressure will increase on the team if they leave.

Obviously this is a relative situation. people are different and take many different factors in their decision making. but I hypothesise statistically speaking we are more likely to end up with high performer, low trust people on the team - those who are the toxic leaders and toxic team players.

My key takeaways from this story are:

1. You can’t make a high performing team by handpicking high performer individuals. If we want to create an A-team we need to take into account first how nice is the person rather than how well they perform individually.
2. Agile practices are not going to improve the results if we get the basics wrong. At the end of the day, people deliver results and without great teams and great leadership agile practices are not going to get us anywhere.

I need your assistance:

What I describe here is a hypothesis based on my observations. I'm interested in getting closer to the truth. So I request if you have experiences/observations similar to this or in contrary to this please let me know in the comments. If you know any research on this topic please let me know in the comments. If you think what I'm saying is rubbish, please let me know in the comments. I'm looking forward to reading your opinion.