Two kinds of energy in a team: convergent energy vs individually brilliant energy.

Convergent energy: each bit of energy steelmans and improves the current centroid of the system.

Makes the system a better, higher fidelity realization of itself.

A "yes, and" energy that builds on the thing in front of them and helps make it better.

Individually brilliant energy: Someone with innovative ideas about how to knock the system off its centroid, to pull it in a new direction.

This energy diverges the system… but possibly in a direction that will turn out to be much better.

In contrast to randomizing energy, that pulls the system off its centroid… but in a random direction, not an improvement.

To see a better path than the one it's on that could be much different requires a particular kind of brilliant mind.

Note that two different vectors of individually brilliant energy can clash or counteract each other.

You need a mix of both of the energies, with the ideal proportion shifting at different times.

If it's a collection of brilliant people then it's just a random self-eroding swarm that never coheres.

If it's all convergent energy you converge on mush.

A key complement to these energies: a curation function.

Look at all of the individually brilliant ideas and select the subset to be adopted into the main thing.

Instead of just random bottom-up energy, you have a curation function that can be coherent to a vision.

Different people bring different energies naturally.

When you combine all three of brilliant energy, a curation function, and convergent energy, you can get a sublime result.