A common pushback to efforts to increase diversity in the workplace is that people should not be selected based on gender or race but based on merit and skill.
My experience managing and working on very large enterprise IT projects is very similar. I believe you need a few very intelligent people( I call this “a few good men/persons” theory, and the name came from the movie “A Few Good Men”) in each area of need, but the essential item is the team’s ability to work together.
I have seen more projects successfully delivered with a team of mainly above-average people who can work together. In teams consisting of very intelligent people, I have noticed that the egos and desire to look more intelligent than everyone else in the room significantly compromise the team’s ability to work together and lead to largely unsatisfied results for customers or even failed projects in some cases.
When I look for a team, I look for at least one very smart person in each area and then build a team of curious above-average people with the right attitude who can work together.
A wealth of information delivered in a concise way: this is excellent, thank you!
My two cents:
My experience managing and working on very large enterprise IT projects is very similar. I believe you need a few very intelligent people( I call this “a few good men/persons” theory, and the name came from the movie “A Few Good Men”) in each area of need, but the essential item is the team’s ability to work together.
I have seen more projects successfully delivered with a team of mainly above-average people who can work together. In teams consisting of very intelligent people, I have noticed that the egos and desire to look more intelligent than everyone else in the room significantly compromise the team’s ability to work together and lead to largely unsatisfied results for customers or even failed projects in some cases.
When I look for a team, I look for at least one very smart person in each area and then build a team of curious above-average people with the right attitude who can work together.