Teams and Personalities

A few pointers from last week's guest lecture by Thread International on team brought up a couple good points:

The product needs to be excellent. It needs to be something that you yourself would purchase/partake in/contribute to. As others have mentioned, "their ass has to look good first." For me, I need to spend a lot more time really tinkering around and developing a good product for the venture rather than focusing on how it will be marketed, sold, and how the profits will be spent.

The team you pick needs to be better than you. Jenna pointed out her observation that while I cared deeply about the social aspect of the venture (education), I cared very little about the product itself. Since my background and interests lie in education, I would need to build a team with someone who is knowledgable about the product and cares about its production, sales, etc. I would also need someone with (possibly) differing opinions on achieving the mission. I frequently get tunnel vision when taking part in something very important to me, so having that additional option or contradicting opinion would add debate and ultimately bring the venture to a better place. A team composed of people who have all the same ideas may not get very far...

As a side note, I completely agree with Yuzhe on the importance of a good leader or at least in a more bureaucratic environment a good manager. Many people have not been blessed with good managers and having worked with both an excellent manager and a horrible manager, being someone who can manager and/or can lead can make or break a team in productivity and morale.