In July 2000, Florentino Pérez was elected club president vowing to sign Luis Figo, the world’s best player at that time, and to build Real Madrid Football Club into the ‘Los Galácticos’, the dream team of football. He quickly signed Figo, then Zinédine Zidane in 2001, Ronaldo a year later, and David Beckham in 2003. He successfully assembled a dream team. All the best players in the world were courted and brought into the magnificent Galacticos each year.
Unfortunately for Perez, this dream team never materialised. Barcelona, their fierce competitor, had other ideas. Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard inflicted defeat after defeat to the ‘Los Galácticos’ including a 3-0 whipping at the Santiago Bernabeu, the sacred home of Real Madrid. On 27 February 2006, Florentino Pérez resigned, and the Real Madrid dream faded.
Pérez did not give up on his ‘Los Galácticos’ dream and returned as club president in 2009. He quickly signed the best in the world including Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Xabi, and a host of other best-in-class players. Three years in, his dream team has yet to fulfil their potential, and his dream continues to be a dream. The same happened in many football clubs since then. Manchester United kept signing up superstars like Paul Pogba, Christiano Ronaldo, and many others. Liverpool signed up an array of superstars with big money but only has 1 Premier League title to show.
We all love dream teams, especially in sports. The US 2004 Basketball dream team had all the stars of the NBA, yet finished third, losing even to Lithuania. At the World Baseball Classic, again the US fielded a dream team but lost to South Korea, Canada and Mexico. In 1982, Brazil had the best football team in the world yet failed to win the FIFA world cup.
Why do dream teams never fulfil their potential? After the fall of the Berlin Wall, with East and West Germany united, many predicted that Germany would emerge as the greatest economic force. Yet, that dream unification never truly materialised the way it was predicted. Dream teams never seem to succeed.
Dream teams are put together to combine the knowledge and expertise of brilliant individuals. Yet, more often we find 3+3=5 whilst elsewhere in high- performing teams 3+3=7. From our research, team failures usually have to do with one of the 4 key reasons below:
- Unclear Team Goals
- Poor Role Clarity
- Lack of Guiding Processes
- Deficiency of Friendships and Interpersonal Relationships
Goals
While working in the US years ago, I witnessed a flock of geese flying south for the winter. You could hear their voices and see them in a V formation heading south in a definite direction. They all seemed very clear about their goal and seem to have built-in inner GPS guiding them to their destination.
Goals are the inner GPS of a team, giving direction to both team and individual. This is the preliminary step for teams — to establish where we are now and defining where we ought to go. Unclear goals are the number one issue of dysfunctional teams. A team will likely fail if goals are unclear.
Goals energise a team and provide the foundations of a good team by establishing the core mission of the team and framing its purpose. Goals unite each individual’s personal effort with team objectives. Tom Shoes has become one of the fastest growing shoe companies. Their goal, “one for one,” creates energy not only with their internal team but also its customers. For every shoe sold, one is given free to the poor. When an organisation has purpose and its goal is clear, there is synergy of action.
Processes
In the 90s, McKinsey launched “the war for talent” study. The study concluded that the best companies had leaders obsessed with finding and hiring as many best talents as possible, advising leaders to “bet on the natural athletes, the ones with the strongest intrinsic skills.” It went further to advise that success required “a deep-seated belief that having better talent at all levels is how you outperform your competitors.”
One company that followed McKinsey’s ‘blueprint’ to the tee was Enron. Enron was the business world’s version of a dream team. Former CEO, Jeff Skilling, only hired the very best MBA graduates and consultants and “stocked the company with talent.” However, somehow the Enron dream team blew up and the ‘best talent in the world’ came to a nought.
At the same time, Enron was blowing up, I worked at GE, where then CEO Jack Welch’s policy was not about hiring talents from top elite business schools. GE looked for passionate leaders and insisted they ‘get their hands dirty learning while doing. Yet, by 2001, the demand for non-elite GE talent was overwhelming and no one seemed to want to hire the ‘stars’ of Enron. GE did not hire ‘stars.’ Their system developed ‘stars.’ Unlike Enron and its ‘star’ hiring policy, GE’s system was its star. There was a clear process to develop people.
Interestingly, most people assume that people make organisation great. I would dare to say it may well be the other way around – organisations make people great. And therein lays the next key — great teams have processes and systems that enable their team to function to its full potential.
At Enron, there were no systems. Enron did have a performance management system based on core values but moved their top talents so often to new roles. Hence, there were never opportunities to evaluate them properly. Sometimes even if an employee was rated 5 (top rating), they were often fired within six months, and there were many cases of lowly rated employees rising to new roles at Enron.
Roles
Enron’s lack of role clarity contributed to its demise. In Gladwell’s ‘Talent Myth’, he shares a story about Enron employee Louise Kitchin. A 29 year gas trader, she believed Enron should develop an online-trading business so she worked in her spare time, leveraging 250 Enron employees to help her. Six months later, Enron CEO Skilling found out, saying approvingly that “they have already purchased servers, started ripping apart the building and have started legal reviews in twenty-two countries by the time I heard about it. It is exactly the kind of behavior that will continue to drive this company forward.”
Kitchin did not have the authorisations or knowledge to run EnronOnline. She wanted to do it, and at Enron, ‘stars’ did whatever they wanted. With such a lack of clarity of roles, it is no wonder Enron ultimately collapsed.
“Some of the worst teams I’ve ever seen have been those where everybody was a potential CEO,” says David Nadler. There is a need for just one CEO. The same problem happens in a football field when everyone decides to play as a striker. 11 strikers with no goalkeeper or defenders will almost guarantee defeat, even if the 11 strikers you have are the best in the world.
One of my most favourite TV shows growing up began with these words: “In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… The A-Team”
The A-Team was a great team because everyone had clear roles — a cigar-gnawing leader who was a master of disguise, a smooth-talking handsome conman, a semi-lunatic ace pilot, a skilled mechanic with jewellery all over his body and a breath-taking van that could soar. Every member of the A-team had clear roles and played them commendably.
Interpersonal Relationships
In “The Apprentice,” when teams are in the ‘board room’ before Donald Trump comes to fire someone, everyone starts protecting themselves by pinning the blame on others. No one takes responsibility and instead sells each other out to survive. The rivalry, bickering and back-biting happens in teams where there are no friendships.
When relationships are competitive, trust is harder to develop. If people think their teammates are insincere, withholding information, suspicious of their motives, or just inept, nothing gets done and teams become dysfunctional. Interpersonal relationships and friendships help establish trust, open communication and feedback.
In most dream teams, everyone is distrustful from the start. There are no deep friendships. Worst still, most often the same team members are battling for the same career promotion or the leader’s affection. Trust takes time to build and is not helped when there is constant instability or huge egos all vying for the same attention.
The Coach
Dream teams often blow up due to lack of goals, roles, processes and friendships. Real Madrid’s dream team has blown up countless times. However, the magic l bullet to transform his dream team usually comes in the form of a Coach. Zinedine Zidane came in and played the role of a catalyst in dictating clear goals, warranting role clarity, building sound processes and ensuring friendship in the organisation. Real Madrid flourished under him. Likewise, Carlo Ancelotti came in last year, after working at Everton Football Club for a few years, and immediately transformed non-performing superstars into stars that won the double for them in 2022.
The 1980 US Olympics hockey team that beat the Soviets to the gold medal was built unequivocally on an ‘anti-dream-team’ philosophy. The fairy tale story was documented into the movie “Miracle” where coach Herb Brooks dropped many of the US’s best players and instead picks his team based on personal chemistry and friendships. When questioned why he dropped some top players and picked many unknowns, he responds, “I’m not looking for the best players. I’m looking for the right players.” The coach is the final success element in the dream team conundrum.
Final Thoughts
Sociologist Elizabeth Cohen found that if kids are put into teams and told to solve a problem, the result is one kid dominating whilst others become totally disengaged. However, if teachers take the time to establish norms – goals, roles, and processes, “not only will [the children] behave according to the new norms, they will enforce rules on other group members. Even very young students can be heard lecturing to other members on how they ought to be behaving.”
In today’s high-tech workplace, it is virtually impossible not to be part of a team. Projects are too big, complex, and involved for a single person to do it all. Michael Schumacher didn’t win Formula One races through rugged individualism. He had a high-performance team behind him. “Men work together,” wrote Robert Frost, “whether they work together or apart.” Great teamwork is an outcome. To ensure the team flourishes, you need to create the conditions. As HR leaders, it is our role to help our business leaders build this high-performance teams.
Yet far too often, people find teamwork to be frustrating and exhausting. It is amazing how many dysfunctional teams we have running around trying to achieve something. If only we take the time to set goals, roles, processes and learn to build friendships with each other, we may just be able to develop a truly dream team. Go on, build your dream team!
Roshan Thiran is CEO of Leaderonomics Group, a group of social enterprises passionate about transforming the nation through leadership development, employee intelligence and learning. Amongst the most innovative businesses that are part of the group include eVulx, an award winning digital simulations organisation, Necole, the leader in blended learning globally and Budaya, who have developed game-changing employee intelligence apps and the MAD Movement.
