Egomaniacs and misfits

I’ve met plenty of egomaniacs who think they have all the answers. Time typically proves them wrong. I’ve never met anyone who’s had more than a few of the answers herself. That’s why we need other leaders to help us. Build a well-rounded team, hopefully one with plenty of misfits, and typically someone in there will have the answer you need to any given problem – or they’ll know where to find it.”
Ted Coine.

When it comes to OSS teams, well-rounded ones aren’t just nice-to-have but a necessity. Given the diversity of domains that OSS cover, it tends to follow that almost all teams have many different character traits and approaches to solving problems by their very nature.

I know Myers-Briggs style of testing has its critics but one organisation I worked with put a high percentage of their leaders through a similar test and had surprising uniformity of personality / problem-solving classifications. They were all on the “Organiser” part of the spectrum, whereas I had more “Creator” tendencies according to the test. The “misfit” so to speak.

I’m a long way from knowing all the answers in OSS but having worked side-by-side with vendors, CSPs and enterprise I’ve met some amazingly talented, yet diverse OSS exponents. To quote Ted Coine, “someone in there will have the answer you need to any given problem – or they’ll know where to find it.”

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