The OG of Agile

History shows how best to manage high performing teams

The term A-players is a way to describe high performers that are smart, take action, adjust quickly, and get things done. The first A-players I saw were on a TV show back in 1983:

“If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire… the A-Team.”

A team of renegades, on the run from the government, managed to escape the most impossible situations with crafty thinking and execution at blindly fast speeds. Nothing stopped the A-Team.

Last week I wrote about Skunk Works, a team led by Kelly Johnson, chief engineer at Lockheed. While there were no death-defying stunts or cartoonish violence involved, what Kelly’s team was able to accomplish was amazing for its ingenuity and speed.

In the course of his 50 year long career at Lockheed, his team managed to produce the most cutting edge and iconic planes ever created. This included the Electra, P-38 Lightning, Constellation, P-80 Shooting Star, F-104 Starfighter, C-130 Hercules, U-2 Dragon Lady, Jetstar, A-12 Oxcart and the SR-71 Blackbird strategic reconnaissance aircraft, which still holds the record for fastest air-breathing manned aircraft…