(Excerpt from The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky)
Typically, the type A “doers” on the team are the powerful antibodies that extinguish new ideas that put time lines and budgets at risk. In contrast, the wide-eyed “dreamers” are the foreign bodies that infect a team with new ideas that challenge the status quo. Most of the time, the immune system (the doers) needs to be strong enough to hold the foreign germs (the dreamers) at bay so we can stay productive and on track. But every now and then, teams need to suppress the immune system so that the dreamers—or any new leader with new ideas—can give the team an organ transplant in the form of fresh ideas, and fundamentally change a process or a product.
When building a team, hire both doers and dreamers in relatively equal proportions. You also need to empower them at the right times. During day-to-day operations, doers must be positioned to question new ideas and keep creative whims in check to ensure progress on the biggest ideas that will make the greatest impact. But when a new problem emerges or a brainstorm begins, doers—and their tendencies—need to be suppressed so the dreamers can do their thing.
… a healthy team’s immune system is liable to reject new team members by default. The more senior and experienced your new team member is, the more the immune system will try to reject her. An experienced player arrives with her own playbook, but the very successes you hired her for are the very things that the team may reject her for. Having a strong will, established best practices from prior experiences, and a big mandate are all sources of friction when joining a new team. If your team is not willing to adjust and accommodate, your newest and potentially greatest hire will fail.