There are two kinds of teams: base teams and expedition teams.
Base teams work in the known, the predictable, and the routine. Their job is to create or manage a predictable outcome, process, or spec. If they do that, they’re successful.
Expedition teams work in VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) arenas. Even when they know where they’re going, they’re not sure what they’re going to find there. And they sometimes don’t even know how to translate or transport what they find back to base. Learning and discovery tend to be the win conditions for expedition teams.
Just as there are different teams, there are different players. Some folks are base team players. Give them the checklists, spreadsheets, and routines all day and they’re happy.
Expedition team players want to live on the edge. That’s where the thrills and discoveries are. That they may not pull off whatever they’re trying to do is a feature, not a bug.
Some people can toggle between the two, but they’re rarer because they have to be able to switch from solving for VUCA to embracing VUCA.
As I said in Team Habits, team dysfunction (or high function) can often come down to team composition.
A team that needs to be an expedition team that’s stacked with base team players is going to struggle. The team will spend so much time getting ready and trying to factor in all the unknowns that they’ll eat up too much of their expedition and implementation time. And the few expedition team players will be so frustrated at having to pull the base team players along that they’ll be worn out before they actually get anywhere.
A team that needs to be a base team that’s stacked with expedition team players is also going to struggle. The team will always be trying to go somewhere new, flashy, and sexy rather than sticking to the knitting. The few base team players will have to follow the expedition team players around with their checklists and procedures and spend so much time cleaning up messes that they’ll just wish they could do it on their own.
One kind of team— and one kind of player— isn’t inherently better than the other. The goal or outcome to achieve determines the kind of team you need, and the kind of team needed determines what players are needed on that team.
