"You have to get along with people, but you also have to recognize that the strength of a team is different people with different perspectives and different personalities"
About this Quote
Effective collaboration demands both civility and difference. Steve Case's line captures the tension between harmony and heterogeneity that sits at the heart of high-performing teams. Getting along is about trust, respect, and a shared commitment to the mission; it prevents friction from turning toxic. But real strength comes from the clash and blend of perspectives, the productive friction that surfaces blind spots and yields better decisions than any single viewpoint could.
Case speaks from hard-won experience. As cofounder of America Online, he built a business at the intersection of technology, media, and policy, where success hinged on aligning engineers, marketers, content creators, and regulators. That history illustrates why mere like-mindedness is not enough: launching a mass-market internet service required voices that saw risk and opportunity from very different angles. It also shows the perils when differences are ignored or poorly integrated, as culture clashes and groupthink can derail even powerful companies.
The practical message is not to hire for similarity or for pleasant unanimity, but to recruit complementary skills and personalities, then create structures that let them challenge one another constructively. Shared goals and values provide cohesion; divergent methods and mental models generate insight. A product team thrives when the engineer obsessed with reliability meets the designer attuned to human behavior and the marketer tracking adoption, provided each is heard and held to the same outcomes. Leaders earn their keep by orchestrating this diversity: setting norms for debate, inviting dissent, making decisions transparently, and fostering psychological safety so that quieter or contrarian voices can influence the course.
Case has extended this view beyond companies to ecosystems, championing regional entrepreneurship through Rise of the Rest. Innovation flourishes when different places and people participate. Getting along is not a call for conformity; it is the social lubricant that allows difference to do its creative work. The job is not to smooth away edges, but to turn them into a cutting edge.
Case speaks from hard-won experience. As cofounder of America Online, he built a business at the intersection of technology, media, and policy, where success hinged on aligning engineers, marketers, content creators, and regulators. That history illustrates why mere like-mindedness is not enough: launching a mass-market internet service required voices that saw risk and opportunity from very different angles. It also shows the perils when differences are ignored or poorly integrated, as culture clashes and groupthink can derail even powerful companies.
The practical message is not to hire for similarity or for pleasant unanimity, but to recruit complementary skills and personalities, then create structures that let them challenge one another constructively. Shared goals and values provide cohesion; divergent methods and mental models generate insight. A product team thrives when the engineer obsessed with reliability meets the designer attuned to human behavior and the marketer tracking adoption, provided each is heard and held to the same outcomes. Leaders earn their keep by orchestrating this diversity: setting norms for debate, inviting dissent, making decisions transparently, and fostering psychological safety so that quieter or contrarian voices can influence the course.
Case has extended this view beyond companies to ecosystems, championing regional entrepreneurship through Rise of the Rest. Innovation flourishes when different places and people participate. Getting along is not a call for conformity; it is the social lubricant that allows difference to do its creative work. The job is not to smooth away edges, but to turn them into a cutting edge.
Quote Details
| Topic | Team Building |
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