One of my great pleasures is watching old television anthology series: “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Twilight Zone” being among my favorites. Every now and then, you come across an episode that sticks with you and is worse than any song that you can’t get out of your head. One such TZ episode is “The Mind and The Matter.” In it, the protagonist is extremely unhappy and most of that unhappiness is directly linked to his dislike of other people (there are too many of them, they are incompetent, etc.). He is given a copy of a book that explains the secrets of how anything is possible and first uses the power to make everyone go away.
Before long, he realizes how desolate a world it is when one is alone and that his wish wasn’t the right one. He therefore changes the wish to bring everyone back but now wants them to be just like him. This turns out to be the worst scenario imaginable. Now the world is filled with a seemingly endless number of annoying, whiny, self-righteous complainers who think they are the only one capable of doing anything. Having learned a valuable lesson, the protagonist brings all the original individuals back and reverts the world to the way it was when the show began.
I can think of no better analogy for creating a team to start a new business venture than this.
Too often, those planning to start a new business fail to solicit opinions and build a solid team because they either feel as if they don’t need anyone, or that no one could ever live up to their expectations. As for needing others, quite often the fear is that the others might steal the idea for themselves or say that it is a foolish idea. While the threat of having an idea stolen is a possibility, most of the time the risk is quite rare. If someone can talk you out of your idea and convince you that it is foolish before you ever begin, then they might be doing you the biggest favor of all and saving you from learning a costly lesson the hard way.
The second category — no one being able to live up to your standards — can be a positive. There are any number of tests one can take that highlight different groups that people fall into. Adding to the team those with other skills can create a stronger team. In the realm of creativity, for example, I am an idea generator: I have no problem coming up with ideas for almost any situation. The problem is that only about one-third of the ideas I come up with are of any value, and I am unable to differentiate which ideas are the great ones and which ones are dreadful. To be a member of a strong team, I need someone else on the team who is an idea optimizer (instead of generator) to keep the ideas focused and to throw out the appalling ones.
By adding a bit of the best that each individual can offer, a team can create results superior to any that one person can hope for. As the character in the episode assures himself, “All well and good. All well and good, to be sure.”
Columns from Anderson University’s Falls School of Business usually appear Tuesdays.
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Emmett Dulaney: New business venture? Build a team
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