When Bain & Company asked senior executives from 308 large companies how they form teams for their most important initiatives, most told us they assemble teams based on whoever is available. Only a small minority indicated that they consistently create all-star teams, comprised of their very best talent, to tackle their company’s highest-priority issues. This is an enormous missed opportunity: we found that the best companies are more than 25% more productive than the rest due to the way they deploy, team and lead scarce, difference-making talent.
How to Manage a Team of All-Stars
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Teaming people with different skills and perspectives together almost always produces more output than the sum of those individuals acting alone. But with star talent, this relationship is more extreme: productive power increases geometrically with the percentage of star players on a team. A five-member team, comprised entirely of A-players, can produce 16 times as much output – or the same output in one-sixteenth the time – as the sum of five average players working individually. And the best companies are more than 25% more productive than the rest due to the way they deploy, team and lead scarce, difference-making talent. Yet research shows that only a small minority of companies consistently create all-star teams, in part because they are so hard to manage. To reap the benefits of these extraordinary teams, the best companies take a disciplined approach. They aren’t afraid to assemble all-star teams to tackle mission-critical initiatives. They reward team performance commensurately. And they use multiple means to manage team member egos.
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