As I've mentioned earlier, I listen to the radio online throughout the day. For those times I am coming to or going from work , I'll listen in the car. One of the main stations I listen to is KMOX. They have a news focused morning show called Total Information AM. The hosts are pretty bland, except for this week. 

This week Debbie Monterrey has been spectacular. Yes, there is the normal news focus, the weather and traffic every 10 minutes, but she was entertaining this week. She related stories from her life, made fun of her co-host and didn't act like hosting a news show was life or death.

What was the difference this week? Her normal co-host, Doug McElvein, is on vacation. Doug is a man of little sense of humor. He's smug, arrogant and most of all, suffocating. When he's hosting the show with Debbie, she defers to him to set the tone, expectations and performance.

I hadn't notice this professional deferrence until I listed to Debbie by herself.

This morning I got to thinking, you can sometimes make teams stronger by removing a member. In this case by removing Doug and leaving the rest of the team, the show became instantly better. More memorable. More enjoyable.

In the IT world we can take this to heart as well. If you have a team member that isn't carrying their own weight, adding obstacles or causing a supression of ideas, it might be to remove them.

Amazing that it took a staid, settled morning radio show to reinforce that addition by subtraction is sometimes the way to go.  

Bookmark/Search this post with:
delicious | digg | reddit | furl | google | yahoo | technorati | icerocket