Creating Great Teams

Foreword

As a consultant and expert in organizational dynamics, I’ve worked with scores of organizations, and over the course of four decades, I’ve observed hundreds of teams and team formations. In many of those cases, the focus was assembling the required mix of technical skills—as if the skills existed apart from the people who had them.

Many years ago, I worked for a big, multinational corporation. The company had technology centers spread over every time zone. Every possible skill was represented somewhere in the company. “Couldn’t we save money and avoid hiring new people if we could make efficient use of those resources?” an executive wondered.

Every technical employee filled out a profile and became an entry in what was called the Global ...