If You Were to Put Together Your Dream Team...

Who would you select? I was reading this article on CNet News about ex-googlers working on stealth social search [hat tip Charlene Li] and was thinking about all the innovation we have seen in my neck of the woods from ex-DuPont teams. 

In the article, Max Ventilla, a former business development manager turned entrepreneur, said he left Google because "it can be tough inside the search giant to make new, big things happen, as well as to marshal enough talent away from the company's main search and advertising products to build new services."

It seems that often the only way to lead change is to break away and start from scratch. This also seems to be part of evolution overall.

Evolution of business was one of my favorite posts at Conversation Agent because it talked about breaking away to create breakthroughs. That is very hard from the inside out. In the post, I outlined four areas essential to creating breakthrough performance in any organization and outlined how they would apply to the evolution of business with the introduction of social media dynamics. Those points were:

1. Market reputation and authority create new options - How do you get authority online? Through participation, sharing, listening and responding where the answer may not necessarily be: your product or service.
2. Consider the costs of not doing - The hidden cost is that of not doing the right things.
3. Customers and markets don't stand still - As a marketer, and a business person, your job is to figure out where that value has shifted to for your customers.
4. Simplicity gets results - Make it easy for people to sign up and to sign off as well.

Taking all of these points combined and looking at the current talent pool of marketing colleagues and friends, I cannot help but think that there is a dream team out there that could really help businesses evolve and innovate. I have a few ideas on who I would select for my dream team.

Are you looking around and building your team? In times of great disruption, which is where we're now, there is even greater opportunity to get a jump start onto what's next. In the article and for ex-DuPont employees, these were people who had worked together before.

Is social media giving you the opportunity and the exposure to experiencing and interacting with people you'd work with? Lists are great, but selecting partners and colleagues is an entirely different thing. Who would you trust with your business? 

[ppsst - don't forget to meet me at SXSW]

Comments

[Steven Woods]

It's an interesting question Valeria - I wonder whether the best innovators are the best on social media? It may not be, the best innovators may be as hard to discover in social media as they are in other avenues, just by their nature. Thought provoking idea though...

[Rick Simmons]

We have built our company on what we hope are innovators and WOM is typically the best way we found of finding them. Whether they try or not they get a following even if they are not really participating online. Often they are too busy with their own "stuff" to promote and even participate outside of their own small network.

[Stephen Denny]

Dream Teams usually aren't comprised of stand out individuals, in my experience, but with people who work well together. Sounds like a cliche until you inherit a team of people who can't. It's agony, betrayal, intrigue and drama, until you can whittle it down to a functional core that you can rebuild on.

Funny you should write this today - I had a conversation earlier with a colleague on this exact topic. I'm working with a group of three to four "A Team" friends, all of whom are looking for the next big gig, and trying to figure out what makes the most sense: a great team looking for a problem. We'll see how it all goes!

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Steven - it was meant to get our juices going. Yes, often the best innovators are so ahead of the times that they have to discover themselves.

@Rick - a very good point. People with passion in innovation, are into it and do not worry about other stuff, like standing out, getting publicity, etc. Their product is it. Except for we'll need to shine a light on it lest it goes unnoticed by the rest of us.

@Stephen - I am noticing a lot of that at the moment. Top notch people working on creating something. If I were a smart company... I think it was Fred Wilson who wrote you can build something from little. That is also an option. Let me know how it goes.

[Ryan Stephens]

Valeria,

Not too long ago I wrote about having the right people, and not necessarily the best people.

I think a lot of things (including the right thing) have to come together for dream teams to align.

I often think about what it would be like to create a dream team from scratch and who those people would be. Would they come from all different backgrounds and experiences? Would they be people that I can't get enough of that I could work with all day and drink with all night? Would it consist of close friends? Lots of different disciplines and schools of thought?

How often do teams form, and then find out later that they are in fact a dream team?

I would love to assemble the perfect dream team for the perfect task, but maybe someone refuses to re-locate. Another insists on spending more time with his family. Etc. These are all viable options, yet all situations where maybe your dream team lacks that one missing piece.

I suspect I'm over thinking this issue, but I appreciate you inspiring the thought the process anyway.

Ryan