Review – Dream Teams by Shane Snow

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Dream Teams are largely built in the space between inertia and destruction. If a bunch of resources in a team are formed with similar characteristics then there could be a good sync between individuals but the similarities in perspectives won’t help in identifying super optimal solutions. Again if the bunch of resources are sorted together with diverse background and characteristics the gain is the difference in perspectives but team synchronization and trust goes for a toss. It’s the cognitive diversity in teams that creates a lot of potential energy but one needs to strike a balance between a friction which is too low or too high. 

This is exactly what this terrific book from Shane Snow on Dream Teams talks about. Shane has tried to showcase both success and failure stories (though not in equal measure) to put forward his perspective of what went right or wrong. Personally, I believe this is how a point of view needs to be put forward.

I found a few of the stories to be pretty interesting like the Ice Hockey’s Red Army from Russia. How did they dominate the international scene for so long?

The Daimler-Chrysler merger story, it was a merger that was worth a $100 billion in valuation at one point in time and believed to be a match between equals that will drive innovation and excellence to an altogether different level. What triggered the collapse? Was culture misfit the only reason?

By the way, team play doesn’t apply to just sport or corporate organizations. What about the government? They happen to create pretty large teams as well. How did the American govt. use pirates to drive out the British outfit from New Orleans. Pirates are known to be notorious, the story of the US govt. collaborating with them to drive out British outfit is an interesting case study. It shows super-ordinate goals can link disparate people but does the story end there?

At one point in time, Jews happened to be a social recluse in Argentina. The localities never really wanted to collaborate with them. How did football make a difference here?

An extreme case is definitely the creation of Rap battles by Robert Diggs. In this environment, individuals or a group of teams are made to clash against each other, their egos are intensely triggered and are made to fight it out in public. High potential energy and insane levels of talents are exhibited in this environment but there is a flip side to it.

Wright brother’s strategy of exploring new horizons in intellectual territory also throws a new perspective.

Overall, Shane Snow’s Dream Teams speaks a lot on in-group versus out-group psychology and the factors that can be made use of to strike a synergy.

My thumbs up to Shane!

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