For a long time I thought that setting up a great team was a matter of bringing the best together.
I was wrong.
Not because the best do not matter, but because "the best" is a category that does not exist in abstract, it exists in context and the context in a company is not static, it changes, it demands, sometimes it breaks.
The team you need to grow at double digit is not the same as you need to survive a crisis, the one that takes you from zero to scale is not the one that helps you order what the scale disordered, the one that reinvents a business is rarely the same that operated it with discipline.
They are different muscles and ask someone who built for stability to lead the reinvention or vice versa, it is not an attitude challenge, it is a substantive misadjustment.
I learned it by seeing how bright people failed, not because they were unable, but because the moment of the company no longer corresponded to what they knew best.
And the most difficult thing was not to recognize the mismatch, it was to admit that sometimes I was part of it, that I kept betting on the team that brought me here, when what was needed was the team that took me to the next place; Loyalty to the past is expensive and paid by the company.
The real leadership is not knowing who's good, it's knowing who's good for now. - - - - - - -
