--- title: You Can’t Buy A Winning Team description: At 1Nebula, we’re thinking globally which is why we are launching OneView on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Find out more here. image: https://www.1nebula.com/hubfs/1Nebula%20-%20You%20Can%E2%80%99t%20Buy%20A%20Winning%20Team.png --- [![Nebula-Logo-1](https://www.1nebula.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Nebula-Logo-1.png?width=200&height=66&name=Nebula-Logo-1.png)](https://www.1nebula.com) - [Home](https://www.1nebula.com) - [OneView](https://oneview.co/) - Services - [OneView ROI Calculator](https://www.1nebula.com/oneview-roi) - [Cloud Services](https://www.1nebula.com/services) - [FinOps](https://www.1nebula.com/finops) - Resources - [Blog](https://www.1nebula.com/blogs) - [SmartBooks](https://www.1nebula.com/smartbook) - About Us - [Company Culture](https://www.1nebula.com/about-us) - [Contact Us](https://www.1nebula.com/contact) - [Careers](https://www.1nebula.com/careers) [Book a Demo](https://www.1nebula.com/book-a-demo-now) ## You Can’t Buy A Winning Team ![ADD_ALT_TEXT_HERE](https://www.1nebula.com/hubfs/blog%20template/Group%20438.png) 1Nebula Team Sep 7, 2026 LEADERSHIP I have been spending a lot of time lately looking at the internal health of my own teams. In leadership, we often fall for a very seductive myth. We believe that if we just hire the smartest people from the best universities and the best families, we will automatically have a winning team. We believe we can simply buy the winning team. This is simply not true. You can put eleven superstars on a soccer pitch and still lose the game. High-performing teams are not a collection of individual cleverness, rather they are a science of alignment, behaviour, and collective skill. As I look at taking over the marketing function in my business right now, I can see where the friction lies. It isn’t a lack of talent. It is a lack of clarity. To fix a team, you have to move past the resume and look at the health of the system itself. ## The Four Boxes of Team Health To evaluate a team, I use a framework of four specific categories. If even one of these boxes is empty, the organization suffers. ## The Three Archetypes of Performance Once you understand the health of the team, you have to decide what kind of "race" you are actually running. Not every team should function the same way. I like to use three metaphoric configurations to help leaders visualize their structure. ## Finding the Intrinsic Fire People often ask me how I identify the "right" people for these seats if I am not just looking at the most clever person in the room. The answer is hunger. I look for "intrinsic fire" rather than "extrinsic fire." Extrinsic fire is driven by money or titles. It is short-lived and flickers out when things get tough. Intrinsic fire is a desire to get better. I look for indicators like participation in sports, because sport requires the discipline to show up when you don't feel like it. I look for continuous learners who study outside of work. I look for people who give back. These are the people who will drive your business forward when the road gets rough. ## The Leader’s Audit Your team dynamic will change depending on the task at hand. Delivering an onboarding for a new client might require a relay team approach, while a crisis might require a rowing team approach. Your job as a leader is to visualize what needs to be done and then configure the seats accordingly. Are you speeding the process up by creating clarity, or are you slowing everyone down because nobody knows which boat they are in? Look at your people today. Are they superstars who can’t play together, or are they a hungry crew moving in total synchronization? 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