Where the BEST competes with the BEST and only the BEST survives
VIRTUOSO CHARACTERISTICS
STAR PERFORMERS. Especially HANDPICKED to play specific key
roles. High on INDIVIDUALISM. Take up CHALLENGES , even at the risk of career. Mediocrity and compromise, find no place in this team. They are considered “too risky, too temperamental, too egocentric, & too difficult to control”.
Right from the inception of the team to member selection and team dynamics, Virtuoso teams play a different ball game.
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DESIGN
FEEDBACK
Assign members on
Insist on hiring only
individual’s availability. Fill in the team as needed.
those with the best skills. Recruit specialists for each position on team.
Getting the task done
Generate a frequent and
is more important than making a mark for it
rich flow of ideas Find and express breakthrough ideas on time.
Repress individual egos. Operate under the
Celebrate individual
tyranny of “We”.
egos. Individuals are in, group consensus is out.
Members break through their egocentrism and become a plurality with single-minded focus on the goal.
BEND THE RULES: THE RAZR TEAM
“In many ways, the idea behind the Razr team was nothing new. At its heart, it’s really not much more than a very smart mobile phone. But no one had ever been able to develop a phone anywhere near as small or as slick as the Razr” Roger Jellicose Director of Operations, Team Razr
Innovation as a team: The vision of the team was to come
up with a design of a sleek and slim phone, never seen before.
Merits over seniority:
An ingenious solution that placed the antenna in the mouthpiece – was proposed by one of the most junior members of the team, a 32 year old engineer named Tadd Scarpelli.
End result : The Razr team stands as an embodiment of a
successful Virtuoso Team where all the three major principles of virtuoso teams (Explore – Exploit- Export) stand justified. The design became the best-selling clamshell cellphone in the world.
Failure of Virtuoso - “The Beatles”
Managing the Virtuosos’-Challenges