When staffing your team favor fresh over fast, adaptability over specialty 

The decision tree that leads to assembling a team capable of successfully running an overnight relay race like Oregon’s original Hood to Coast Relay or its picturesque downstate descendent the Wild Rogue Relay, follows a similar course to the process of staffing and running an efficient, energetic and efficacious small business, beginning with starting line thinking: running a good race is founded on realistic expectations, careful resource allocation, planning, and communication with a team whose members are all able to run the distance required by the race, but running a great race also means careful consideration of the personality alchemy between the folks with whom you’ll be driving, running, brainstorming, problem solving, cheering, supporting, suffering and celebrating throughout the occasionally grueling, often ineffable experience of working together to navigate the course. 

Overnight relays are 200-ish mile races, where teams of 12 runners – 6 runners in two vans – start on a Friday morning, with Van 1’s runners each doing a 6+ mile stretch (a “leg”), then handing off to Van 2’s runners to do the same, back and forth through the day and night and day until everybody has run 3 times, slept very little, hopefully laughed a lot, certainly is loopy tired and excited to cross the finish line together, share a meal, tell race stories, and (again hopefully) start talking about doing it again. 

Teams wanting to maximize the chances of a great race should make sure to recruit “Swiss Army” teammates, those who balance their dedication to running with creative curiosity, problem-solving acumen and willingness to try new things. Small businesses who season their creative teams with Swiss Army teammates are likewise better equipped to rise to new challenges with inspiration and energy that can ripple throughout the team. 

“Everyone has a plan until the first time
they get punched in the mouth.”
— Mike Tyson

The teams laughing together at the beginning of the race, smiling as they huddle in predawn drizzle waiting for their runners, and still able to break into spontaneous dance parties at the finish line are the ones populated with at least a few key members whose vision of the big picture is only penciled in by default, who maintain the innate understanding that there might always be a punch in the mouth around the corner, requiring rapid reassessment, collaborative rearrangement, and refocusing in order to navigate the new situation (and minimize subsequent punches). In small business, the Swiss Army runner analog is a creative generalist, a team member whose diverse skills and experience in various mediums — writing, design, social media, web development, etc. — allows them to contribute to multiple aspects of multiple projects, thereby boosting the organization’s overall productivity, agility and fluency in responding to new business needs.

In relay races as in mission-driven organizations, every team captain will measure the distance, terrain, and course conditions to create a sense of what each section requires and build their strategy to meet those factors. Unfortunately, race day mouth-punches (weather, traffic, technical failures, someone’s kid gets sick, etc.) can unpredictably tilt things enough to require that new plans be imagined, agreed upon, communicated, deployed, and optimized while the race is under way. 

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” 
— Bruce Lee

Teams whose foundational strategy was optimized around pre-race givens — whose hiring manager’s mission was to recruit athletes who run fast when it’s their turn — are more likely to falter when, for example, a funding source unexpectedly dries up, quarterly revenues don’t hit projections, or a teammate has a family emergency and can’t run their leg. Teams with at least a few runners who are creative, Swiss Army-capable, and familiar with navigating unfamiliar territory are more able to take the new conditions in stride. 

In the same way an adaptable runner might spontaneously let go of their attachment to the pre-race plan in order to fill in for an injured teammate while the rest of the van brainstorms how the rest of the race will flow in this new configuration, a creative generalist with design chops (who is officially assigned to the writing team) could lend support to the graphic designer suddenly finding themselves behind schedule when an unplanned, time-sensitive opportunity presents itself. That support could include jumping in to share the workload or it might simply consist of using her design workflow knowledge to help the designer think through a realistic roadmap for the new work, or provide backup should the designer’s conclusion be that the expectation can’t be met with existing resources. 

The creative generalist’s experience distributes emotional weight, works as a check and balance, and can be deployed in various ways to fill in gaps or meet new needs.

“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”
— Walt Disney 

The creative generalist’s ability to task switch likely arose from a combination of penchant (a strong sense of curiosity, wide ranging personal interests, willingness to try new things) and necessity (time spent in startup culture where task lists are long, deadlines are tight, and flat org charts (with lean teams) offer opportunities to work across departments).

The result of what might seem at a glance as a scattershot approach to career development is that the creative generalist’s brain and nervous system are wired differently than those who choose a specific corporate ladder and climb it one rung at a time. The creative generalist has the built-in ability to view each project from a number of perspectives because they have, at various times, been responsible for many of the pieces that make up the whole. This multi-angle perspective allows them to see pathways not always apparent to project managers or specialists. 

Should one of the team become injured early in the race, the Swiss Army teammate might remember (and be able to gently coax) a runner from last year’s team to meet up along the course and fill in for just one of the injured runner’s legs. That spark of inspiration might lead another teammate to think of someone they know who might be able to similarly participate in a limited — but suddenly very meaningful — way. And just like that, what could have been a race-ending event is not only solved but the innovative, outside-the-box idea to bring in old and new friends creates energy, camaraderie, and a “we can do it” sense of accomplishment for the whole team. 

“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
— Steve Jobs

The Swiss Army teammate brings to work their penchant for learning and doing, their fresh perspective, and a skillset that can be exercised in multiple ways to enhance productivity and creativity in a variety of creative disciplines. On the race course, the Swiss Army teammate might not be the fastest runner, but should an unexpected punch knock things out of whack, they’re the ones engaging with can-do curiosity, contributing insight, wisdom, and creativity to the problem solving conversation before hitting the road to run their leg.