Building The Perfect Team: The Superhero Way
When I was a kid, my parents were concerned that I spent too much time reading comic books and watching cartoons. Little did they know that I was actually preparing for a life of helping organizations exceed their wildest goals by thinking audaciously. That’s because the DC and Marvel comics of the 1970s are actually the best management consulting books ever written. When it comes to building great companies and teams, Peter Drucker had nothing on Jack Kirby.
The so-called “bronze age” of comics lasted from the early 1970s until the mid ‘80s, which pretty much syncs up with my childhood. I got into the classics later, of course, but when I was a kid, it was all about Green Arrow, Conan the Barbarian, and Swamp Thing. And of course, I loved cartoons like Super Friends, Thundarr The Barbarian, and even the short-lived Godzilla series.
So, what does my nerdy childhood (which also included a lot of Dungeons & Dragons) have to do with organizational excellence? As it turns out, quite a lot. Consider the Justice League of America.
The JLA’s roots were in the 1960s comics, but the team was reincarnated when animation house Hanna Barbera bought the rights to the DC Comics catalogue. They launched the Super Friends cartoon series, which is probably best known for its frequent use of the line, “Meanwhile... at the Hall of Justice.” The animation may have been crappy, and the writing was often a mess, but the basic concept was sound: put a bunch of superheroes together to work as a team.
The idea of comic book heroes working together wasn’t a new concept, but Super Friends took it to a new level by creating a permanent team that included folks who had done pretty well on their own: Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Batman, and Robin. They were periodically supplemented by well-known DC characters Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, The Atom, and Firestorm.
This roster of superheroes was formidable, but their success came from the range of individual skills that the team members possessed. In just about every episode, the JLA would be in trouble until one of the members used his or her specific skill set to jump in and save the day. This is incredibly important: it wasn’t just that the JLA was an amazing group, it was that any one of the members could be the big hero on any given day. This is the essence of leadership and team building in the real world.
What made the JLA so good was that they could do anything as a group and were clearly stronger than the sum of their parts. Batman was formidable in his own right, but if the team had just included six guys in bat suits, the Legion of Doom would have crushed them in episode 1. Ditto for Superman: he could fly around the earth at the speed of light, but Lex Luthor would have ended the entire JLA if all of the members were vulnerable to kryptonite.
Whether they know it or not, successful organizations are built exactly like the Justice League of America in several key ways:
Everyone has a different skill set. This allows the group to pick the right person for every job.
Everyone’s vulnerabilities are known to everyone on the team. This prevents the whole group from being defeated because of one member’s weaknesses.
Everyone is empowered to make his or her own choices. Sometimes the Supermans need to trust the Robins of the world!
Diversity is a strength. The Super Friends show first aired in the early 1970s, which coincided with the first real “mainstreaming” of underrepresented communities in entertainment media. Wonder Woman was an integral part of the team, not just eye candy. New characters such as Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, El Dorado, and Samurai may have been broad-brush caricatures, but at least a generation of kids grew up thinking that you didn’t have to be white to be a superhero.
No one blamed anyone else for problems. Think about it: Wonder Woman never got mad at Superman when Lex Luthor tossed kryptonite at him. Aquaman didn’t rage at Robin when he got kidnapped by the Legion of Doom. They all just dealt.
They all celebrated their successes together. At the end of every episode, the JLA would break the fourth wall to talk to the audience as a team. Even minor characters like the Wonder Twins were in on the action. This is something that every successful organization does.
There is no one recipe for success, of course. Every organization is different, and what works in one may not be universally applicable. But by following the principles that the Justice League of America set out nearly 50 years ago, it’s possible to aim for the stars—and occasionally move a menacing asteroid out of the way.