Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations (16 page)

Of course, you may get lucky. The deep loyalty that characterizes “Lifeboat” pairs—after all, they have often literally saved each other from certain death—can make them a formidable force: Got Your Six taken to the nth degree. In that earlier section we mentioned Grant and Sherman—and indeed, they famously covered for each other. But they also, at least at the beginning of the Civil War, even better fit the Lifeboat team model—remember Sherman’s statement: “[Grant] stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk; and now we stand by each other always.”

The two men hit bottom in their lives in the lonely antebellum years after the Mexican War. Sherman had missed that war, stuck in various failed commands in the West. Then, obtaining a command at the beginning of the Civil War, and placed in the thankless command of the army in Kentucky, he had a nervous breakdown and was relieved of duty.

Grant, by comparison, was a hero of the earlier war, but also in a lonely posting out West began to show a pattern with which he would be associated in the years to come—becoming depressed at being apart from his wife and taking to drink. In time, this led to a forced resignation from the army. This was followed by seven years of poverty for his family, as Grant failed at one business after another.

In other words, Sherman wasn’t exaggerating with his remark. It was only the desperate shortage of experienced officers that led the Union army to give the two men one more chance. They soon proved their worth, both individually and as a team, on the second day of the Battle of Shiloh.

Because a Lifeboat partnership is built on the mutual rescue of two individuals who have reached rock bottom, it typically features an almost superhuman level of commitment to that relationship by both partners. That commitment can be a formidable force—especially if beyond the obvious failures of the two individuals
there lie impressive but unrealized gifts. If you can find them, hiring these “failures” can be a steal: no one else wants them, they are cheap to hire, and they will be almost as loyal to the organization that “saves” them as they will be to each other. But keep in mind that if one slips, he or she is likely to also pull down the other.

PAIRS DEFINED BY DIFFERENCE

8.0—YIN AND YANG:
“Yin and Yang” pairs are teams of two individuals whose different skills combine to produce a complete and competitive force. These pair-teams are typically found among salespeople, educators, and law enforcement officers (and criminals), and in the creative business professions such as advertising, art design, and copywriting.

In the classic Yin and Yang teams, one individual is artistic, the other empirical; or one brings the verbal skills, the other the nonverbal; or one is the extrovert, the other the introvert. This combination often appears in the entertainment business. Think of the many songwriters and lyricists, from Rodgers and Hart (or Hammerstein) to Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields all the way up to Elton John and Bernie Taupin; or performer-producer combinations such as Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones or Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle. And it can also be found in pairings of performers and business managers (Johnny Carson and Henry Bushkin, Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser, and hundreds of others).

In the business world, Yin and Yang teams take several common forms: businessperson and scientist/engineer, salesperson and contract specialist, and marketer and manufacturer. In small companies, the operator-and-silent-partner duo is one of the most common. In high-tech start-ups, the combination of the entrepreneur and the techie (Jobs and Wozniak being the most famous) is
so ubiquitous that new companies that lack this combination are looked upon by investors and potential hires as suspect.

In daily life, across all professions, one of the most common and yet least celebrated Yin and Yang teams is that of the innovator and the communicator. Most highly successful individuals combine high skill levels with decisiveness and action. That combination is rare enough, so to expect an individual to also be a great communicator is usually a bridge too far, the convergence of all of those attributes too rare. Conversely, there are a number of people with superior communication skills—in particular, the ability to convert complex concepts into easy-to-understand narratives and powerful and intuitive metaphors. Bringing together these two types of individuals can lead to extraordinary results that only grow better with time, as the individual serving as the scribe/speechwriter/ghostwriter learns his or her subject’s voice and thought processes. At the highest levels (Peter Robinson writing Ronald Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech) this kind of partnership can change the world. But even at a lesser degree, it can still have a valuable effect at the corporate, divisional, or even departmental level of an organization.

That said, Yin and Yang teams are naturally volatile; a chimera of two very different species of human personalities that will always be fundamentally incompatible at some level. The extended failure of such a pairing will almost always lead to a breakup and mutual recriminations. But success can also lead to an early split, as each party, not fully appreciating the value or the contribution of the other, comes to believe that he or she is the real source of success, is insufficiently credited for that achievement, and can be even more successful on his or her own. This is the story of an endless number of musical duos or lead singers in larger groups, songwriting teams, and comic teams (Martin and Lewis). It also takes place in creative teams (Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks), and most of all, in business partnerships.

Unfortunately, the cracks in this type of team often start very early—and great success can lead to fissures so huge that they simply can’t be mended . . . except for some hollow “reunion” years hence that exhibit little of the power of the original pairing.

A classic form of the Yin and Yang relationship is:

8.1—THE ARTIST AND THE ANGEL:
These are “investment” partnerships. The analogy is to the venture capitalist and the entrepreneur. These are pair-teams in which the individual members exhibit very different skill sets, and they enter into the partnership with not only very different interests and needs, but also different—but symbiotic—notions of success.

A classic example of such an “Artist-Angel” pair is the brothers Vincent and Theo van Gogh. As you may know, younger brother Theo financially and emotionally supported the work of his more famous artist brother. Indeed, in Vincent’s short lifetime, brother Theo was the only buyer of his works. Theo, himself a successful art dealer and a key figure in the public acceptance of Impressionism, stood by Vincent even as the artist’s mind deteriorated, providing him with money, helping check him into hospitals, and being there, without questioning, to the very end. It can certainly be said that without Theo van Gogh, the world would never know Vincent’s late masterpieces, some of the most valuable works of art ever created.

Tragically—but also offering a glimpse into the intensity that can characterize these odd couples—Theo lived only six months longer than his brother, dying of a dementia that could have been due to syphilis, but was just as likely, as his death certificate noted, owing to “heredity, chronic disease, overwork, sadness.”

Artist-Angel pairs are, not surprisingly, most often found in the creative arts. That’s been the case throughout history—think of the many court painters (like Leonardo, Goya, Holbein), papal artists (Raphael, Michelangelo, Bernini), writers (Machiavelli, Milton,
Bacon), and composers (Handel, Mozart, Beethoven) throughout history who have dedicated their work to patrons.

And these relationships don’t just characterize an earlier era—in the more recent centuries, the allegiance has merely shifted to other types of wealthy patrons; for example, Rilke with his rich mistresses and the Swiss industrialist patron Werner Reinhart, or, conversely, Peggy Guggenheim with Kandinsky, Duchamp, and Pollock. Artists these days often find their patronage from the government (for example, from the National Endowment for the Arts), or from traditional patrons now filtered through their foundations.

In the modern world, the Artist-Angel pairing has also found other, equally influential, outlets. One is the top corporate executive who develops a close relationship with the company’s top creative person. The automotive industry has long been characterized by executive-designer teams, from Lawrence Fisher with Harley Earl at General Motors, to Virgil Exner and Raymond Loewy at Studebaker (Loewy, probably the premier designer of the twentieth century, developed similar relationships with executives at numerous other corporations).

Fashion designers are also noted for their Artist-Angel pairings, typically with a business manager (and sometimes life partner) who, more often than not, remains in the shadows. This has been the case at least as far back as Pierre Wertheimer and Coco Chanel, and it has certainly been the case with the likes of such legends as Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio Armani, and Christian Dior.

But, for all the success of those pair-teams, arguably the most powerful Artist-Angel pairings in modern life are between angel investors and innovative entrepreneurs. Because angel investors typically work with start-up companies in their earliest days, funding them as they develop products and services in preparation for their first (“series A”) injection of big venture capital money, they usually work very closely with their entrepreneur counterparts.
Without angels, most new start-ups would never even make it to the starting line.

Artist-Angel pair-teams represent the ultimate utilitarian relationships, in that the members of the pair have almost no overlap in skills or interests. Because of that, these teams are among the most pragmatic of all teams, and the least subject to the storms of emotion, competitiveness, and jealousy found in some of the other partnership types. Indeed, of all the pair-teams, Artist-Angel partners are the most likely to have found the partners motivated to maximize each other’s success, not least because that success is measured differently for each of them.

Such pairings, because the relationship is highly practical and instrumental, typically exhibit equally pragmatic life cycles. The pairs are usually formed to tackle a particular business or creative challenge, and they are dissolved when that challenge is met—no hanging on because of residual emotional ties. That precision usually means that these teams operate only during the period of highest productivity, and thus produce the best possible bottom-line results. The only real danger is if the angel in this pair begins to exploit the artist, Svengali-like. Think of “Colonel” Tom Parker and Elvis Presley, or Don King with his various boxers.

9.0—COUNTERWEIGHTS:
These partnerships resemble Yin and Yang pairs, but rather than being about skills, they are instead about character and personality traits. Yin and Yangs need each other on a professional basis; Counterweights need each other also on a personal—and ultimately, often unhealthy—basis.

Even more than Yin and Yangs, Counterweight pairs often crack from the twin wedges of pride and resentment. But to these threats can be added both dependence and disgust. This kind of partnership is often the subject of fiction, as its weird chemistry holds the potential for both great achievements and bitter divorces—even violence.

The various forms that Counterweight pair-teams take are all celebrated, and are thus the subject of endless curiosity and speculation. As with any marriage of opposites, it is constantly asked how these two people ever found each other, whether they have anything at all in common, and what keeps them together. Thus, the shy person with the showman, the coward with the hero, the technical genius with the natural leader, the playboy with the clerk.

Perhaps the most famous example of such a Counterweight partnership in popular culture is that of Captain Kirk with Mr. Spock. But again, these pairs are found everywhere, such as Facebook’s young founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and his “adult supervisor,” Sheryl Sandberg, or Oracle’s chairman, Larry Ellison, and CEO, Safra Catz. Pairs of explorers often show this combination, including Lewis (depressive) and Clark (optimist), and Robert Peary (promoter) and “Arctic Eagle” Paul Siple (quiet competence). Even Orville and Wilbur Wright seem to have exhibited some Counterweight characteristics.

The best Mormon missionary teams, experience has shown, are often Counterweight pairs, their emotional completeness enabling them to cope with the hugely stressful experience of being thrown into an alien environment while still expected to do their job. That fact offers a window into how Counterweight pairs work best: When facing huge, stressful, and sometimes even dangerous challenges—especially one that requires both risk-taking and a cool appraisal of the facts—most individuals lack one or both traits and are quickly overwhelmed. But a pair with supplementary traits has a much better chance of bringing all the requisite perspectives and attitudes to the challenge.

Because Counterweight teams operate at the very heart of the human psyche, they can be incredibly strong—to the point where they can overcome almost any differences in personalities, background, and lifestyle. That’s because the experience of being made “complete” by another is so comforting and satisfying—and ultimately
successful—that it creates the most powerful positive feedback loop imaginable. The result is a partnership that is so unlikely that it leaves outside observers scratching their heads: the casual player who never takes anything seriously teamed with the uptight grind with no apparent sense of humor; the borderline criminal with the by-the-book straight man; the deeply religious person with the godless rule-breaker; the family man with the rake; the archradical with the archreactionary . . . it doesn’t take much searching to find successful examples of each of those types of Counterweight pairs. Think of senators Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy or actors Wally Cox and Marlon Brando. The danger is that Counterweight pairs can create a dependency that, at its worst, can lead to devastating breakups or even violence.