Xtreme Teams

Great article on FastCompany on highly motivated and creative and performing teams. Xtreme Teams.

_Dan Taylor, the team’s animation supervisor, puts it this way: “You can’t turn people into just a pair of hands. It’s always a mistake to dictate how a shot should be done. Doing so completely devalues people and their creative abilities. How can people get excited about being part of that kind of a team?”

That kind of hands-off management is the perfect strategy to push a team to become extreme, says Jean Lipman-Blumen. “You want to create an environment that allows people to think for themselves and to take chances,” she says. “And that means loosening controls, rather than tightening them. It means organizing not more but less. Check people’s work, but leave how they do that work to their discretion. Don’t get involved in the details of execution.”_

This is really hard to do in reality but choosing the right people can help. Check this quote from Dee Hock in relation to this:

_Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities._