By Mark Murphy
At a mid-sized tech company, the software development team raced against the clock.
They were in the final stages of a critical project – a groundbreaking application poised to revolutionize their market niche.
However, recurring bugs and performance issues slowed their progress.
Tight deadlines and high stakes added stress and frustration amongst team members and stakeholders.
A team of different personalities
The team comprised dynamic personalities: trailblazing visionaries generating innovative ideas; a decision-maker setting clear goals aligned with the company’s vision; planners keeping deadlines in focus; and peacemakers maintaining harmony.
Despite this, they still struggled with debugging and performance optimization.
The visionaries overlooked crucial details, while the decision-makers and planners focused on deadlines and sometimes compromised quality. Peacemakers lifted spirits but lacked the technical precision to address persistent bugs.
What the team really needed was someone meticulous, detail-oriented, and capable of identifying and fixing bugs to ensure flawless software performance.
Best teams
The best teams in the office are like the best teams in the NBA or NFL: teams that have a diverse mix of talented people, each fulfilling a distinct and uniquely vital role.
On sports teams, the roles – quarterback, running back, point guard, center, etc. – are easy to name and identify.
On the best work teams, the role distinctions are more subtle yet no less important.
The five distinct roles on every great work team are:
The ‘Director’: This person provides decisive leadership, setting clear goals and aligning the team with a strategic vision to ensure progress.
The ‘Trailblazer’: This person brings innovation and creativity to the team, often challenging conventional approaches and spearheading new solutions.
The ‘Harmonizer’: This person fosters teamwork and collaboration, acting as a mediator in conflicts and prioritizing relationship-building.
The ‘Stabilizer’: This person ensures adherence to processes and deadlines through careful planning and organization, providing structure and stability.
The ‘Achiever’: This person is focused on meticulous task completion, delivering high-quality, error-free work, and achieving specific, tangible goals.
You can’t afford to have even one of these missing…
Data from the test “What Type Of Team Player Are You?” reveals that missing even one of those roles can severely hamper a team’s effectiveness.
And in our opening example, it’s clear that the team desperately needs to fill the role of Achiever.
So why can’t companies see who they’ll need?
Here’s my thoughts: So often we focus on the more visible and obvious roles, like the Directors making the big decisions or the Harmonizers boosting our teams’ morale.
…but you definitely need an Achiever
Yet the success of a team is just as likely to be determined by whether or not you’ve got an Achiever diligently working in the background.
The late Steve Jobs is rightly lauded for his trailblazing decisions that redefined and transformed the technologies to which we’re all addicted.
Yet underlying Jobs’ transformative decisions were a group of Achievers behind the scenes who made those trailblazing moves possible.
Apple’s design has always set the company’s products apart, and much of the impetus for beautiful design came from Steve Jobs.
Something as simple as displaying rounded rectangles on a screen (rather than the boxy squares we merely tolerated), was the result of Jobs’ demanding vision.
But he couldn’t make them; the making fell to Bill Atkinson, an early Apple employee and genius developer of graphics for the Macintosh.
As recounted in his biography, Jobs asked the Macintosh team about drawing rectangles with rounded corners:
“I don’t think we really need it,’ said Atkinson, who explained that it would be almost impossible to do. ‘Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere!’ Jobs said, jumping up and getting more intense. ‘Just look around this room!’ He pointed out the whiteboard and the tabletop and other objects that were rectangular with rounded corners. ‘And look outside, there’s even more, practically everywhere you look!’ He dragged Atkinson out for a walk, pointing out car windows and billboards and street signs.”
Finally, Atkinson relented. And the next day, presumably after a night of non-stop coding, Atkinson walked into the office with a big smile on his face and his computer drawing rounded rectangles at blazing fast speeds.
To be clear, this is not an admonition to incessantly make all-nighter demands on your team.
Rather, this is to point out that while Jobs gets credit for the beautiful design, including those rounded rectangles, there are Achievers behind the scenes turning the vision into reality.
Achievers, by their nature, aren’t clamoring to sit at the head of the conference room table.
They’re unlikely to make lengthy speeches or dominate discussions.
And they’d typically prefer to avoid being put in charge of the group.
But make no mistake, they are vital to the success of every single team.
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