Diversity isn’t an impediment to building a great team—rather, it’s the fundamental ingredient without which a great team cannot exist. If we were all the same, there would doubtless be things that all of us could not do, and that therefore the team could not do. We need to partner with people whose strengths—whose weirdness, whose spikiness—is different from ours if we are to achieve results that demand more abilities than any of us has alone. And this means, in turn, that the more different we are from one another, the more we need one another. The more different we are, the more we rely on understanding and appreciating the strengths of others, and on building a shared understanding of purpose, and an atmosphere of safety and trust, so that those strengths can be most usefully put to work. Well-roundedness is a misguided and futile objective when it comes to individual people; but when it comes to teams, it’s an absolute necessity. The more diverse the team members, the more weird, spiky, and idiosyncratic they are, the more well-rounded the team.

Whatever challenges exist within the organization can be traced to the cohesion of the

executive team and its capabilities in prediction, delegation, and repetition.

Nothing is tougher and more time-consuming than having to replace people who haven’t kept up with the growth of the business.

Teams need to be well-rounded, but their individual members don’t have to be.

To realize a vision, you need people doing stuff!