The Formula for High Performing Teams
Are those teams born or made?
It took me a while to understand that the real success is a product of a team effort rather than an individual. Our ego-driven culture worships the individual. We call them “heroes.” History books are filled with stories of kings, generals, and inventors.
But this is a distortion of reality. While an individual can spark a change, sustained success is the product of a Team.
There is an old saying that has guided my career:
“If you can do it on your own, the challenge probably isn’t big enough.”
Yes, we need leaders. But I am convinced that the long-term success in our infinite game of progress lies in the hands of High Performing Teams.
The Search for the Formula
Most successful people will tell you that success is not a matter of sheer luck or brute force. It is a formula.
Naval Ravikant famously said: “You can put me in any given English-speaking country and within 10 years I will be wealthy again.”[1] He has a set of “first principles”[2] for wealth.
I am looking for the First Principles of Teams.
In a world where everything seems to have been said, I still could not find a comprehensive, engineering-grade answer to the question: What is the Formula for a High Performing Team?
Who am I?
This newsletter is my laboratory. It is where I document what I have learned from studying the world’s best leaders, best teams and best companies, combined with my own research.
I have spent the last 35 years testing these principles in the real world—from the days I played basketball with my friends, to my current role as a father, a husband, a coach, a player, a founder, and leader of operations at global companies.
Whether on the court or in the boardroom, I am interested in mechanics: What makes a group of people function as one team. Where, like in quantum world, the conventional laws of physics change and where 2+2 is not 4, but can be 5, 10, or even a 100.
What you can expect?
An overview, a study of what are the ingredients that create those High Performing Teams, those Best Teams. I do hope that you will also help this by sharing your personal experiences. Maybe you had a chance to be part of that great team? Maybe you managed to create one? I want to share my experience, my learnings, my current “mental model” and i put it in public to share it and also to have it challenged, at the end to make it stronger, better, more complete. Lets go!