The ”President of the Internet” has written a great article on The Art and Science of a Great Team. I’ve lead an incredible team before (although it was “only” a computer game team ) and what Dan James says rings very true. In fact I was going through writing this post, and commenting on each individual point. Unfortunately, it just looked like “exactly”, “same with us”, and “we did that”. Instead, let me ask a question.

I was a part of a great team before starting my own great team. Several of the people that were on my great team, started their own teams that turned into great ones. I wonder if “teams” are hereditary. Dan, were you a part of a great team sometime before you started silverorange?

Probably the most controversial statement is that “you can’t make it happen”. Why not? I know you can’t get a team by declaring that you have a team, but a person who has been on a great team before can probably create a situation that a great team can form in. When you know how a great team acts, you can act in that way yourself.

I said I would not just say, “Yeah, that’s true”, but here I go.

“By putting a team up on a pedestal at the start you are placing expectations on a team that ruins the creativity, the wonder, and the fun.” - This one seems counter-intuitive, but is true. I had to leave my “Team” because I did not have that much time for computer games. Later on the team decide to reform. They deliberately choose a different name, so that no one would have expectations and they would not have anything to “live up to” while they were becoming a team. They now have another outstanding team.