Defining the Ideal Team Player

Posted August 27, 2013

Harvard Business Review’s article by Alex “Sandy” Pentland called the “The New Science of Building Great Teams” [HBR: April, 2012] defines, based on data, the ideal team player. Data was collected, using sensors, to look at communication, interaction and body language. This data made a link between successful teams and the type of interactions the employees had with each other, with management, etc. From this data they define the ideal team member.

“Badge data show that these people circulate actively, engaging people in short, high energy conversations. They are democratic with their time – communicating with everyone equally and making sure all team members get a
chance to contribute. They are not necessarily extroverts, although they feel comfortable approaching other people. They listen more than they talk and are usually very engaged with whomever they’re listening to….the best team players also connect their teammates and spread ideas around.”

The information was fascinating and the results similar to a LA Times article I read on Bank of America doing a similar sensor study. One of their solutions was having breaks at common times and one main kitchen (instead of multiple smaller ones) so people had to run into each other.

Leadership, Mentoring, Personal Growth, Team Building

Ann Banning - Wright

CLIENT:	Large Engineering Firm
CHALLENGE:	Extend and secure new contracts in the area of Data Centers for telecommunication, finance and media industries.
RESEARCH:	Designed face-to-face interviews that reveal the challenges and the breakdowns that cause the most pain in data centers.
DISCOVERY OF UNTAPPED POTENTIAL:	Identified “downtime” as the most critical concern evidenced by a financial institution losing $260 million dollars a minute when their check processing centers went off line. A variety of well- intentioned vendors, designers, departments and process operators were responsible for getting back online but we discovered they were often working independently in silo’s – a cumbersome and inefficient response to an expensive problem.
HARNESS POTENTIAL:	Plucked individuals from across departments and disciplines to assemble a team dedicated to “Collaborative Design and Operations for Data Center Uptime. Newly formed team collaboratively built and marketed a unique practice promising result. Data Center Uptime Named the Offer > OnlinEnivronments. Specified all the moving parts of the OnlineEnvironments Design Solution and the cost benefit. Geography of Facility – Architecture and Engineering of Facility – IT Infrastructure and Facilities Management – Process Design and Outage Prevention Management
RESULTS:	Out-of-the-gate this untapped potential accelerated growth and generated 14million dollars of new revenue. This success demonstrates how a distinctive solution accelerates a company’s capacity to become market leaders, to choose their clients and to charge more for it. The optimum result of working with Bright Operations is the creation of a structural and operational eco-system that is sustainable over time, producing preferred transactions and smart market extensions over and over again. In other words, “Wow, we’ve done it again!”

Defining the Ideal Team Player

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Defining the Ideal Team Player

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