In a speech last month, during the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national council meet in New Delhi, PM Narendra Modi singled out one man in a ‘thank you’ speech that went on for a few minutes.
Amit Shah was the pick... the “man of the match”... the strategist behind the saffron party’s record 2014 win... the man who had crafted one of modern India’s most stunning election campaigns and the brain who had turned a once media-wary Chief Minister into one of the most admired men in the country. Modi is the master of the dais while Shah works in the background, slowly chalking a routemap for the political juggernaut that the BJP has become.
And for Shah, Modi’s Delhi speech was more than just a pat on the back. It was a hand-shake at the very summit of their friendship and a celebration of how effective and functional their team had become — absolutely impervious to outside influence and a singular effort moving towards one aim.
The power of two
It’s everywhere and has been around for a while actually — two very different entities working in pairs to create something exponentially more powerful than the sum of each part. Even in cricket, the fast bowlers hunt in pairs for maximum damage. In nature, carnivores, over the course of evolution, have worked out what’s described as ‘co-operative hunting’. Meanwhile, in the human forte of manufacturing and creation... don’t even ask. Most of you would know Flipkart — India’s most recent, enterprise success story.
But in that particular endevour, the teamwork between Apple’s two ‘Steves’ — Wozniak and Jobs — is of note. The late Jobs was the visionary while Wozniak was the technical wizard — converting Jobs’ ideas into workable blueprints. Jobs also did all the speeches and marketing. Their relationship though, was often difficult due to Jobs’ manic temper, with Wozniak even claiming “no others wanted to work under Steve Jobs ever again”.
“He would directly confront people and almost call them idiots. But you know what? When they confronted him back and told him why they were right in understandable forms, he was just testing and learning, and he would respect those people and give them high privileges in the company.” Wozniak and Jobs shared that productive back and forth.
“It has to be about a mutual respect and understanding and knowing that we are working towards one goal,” says Vishal Dadlani, one part of Bollywood’s music composing duo Vishal-Shekhar. “We started nearly 15 years ago and we devised a process which allows us to make criticism productive. In fact, you become the best team when there IS a bit of difference in opinion and talent. For example, Shekhar is the one trained in Indian classical music, not me. His contribution towards our songs is simply immense and as we go towards creating music, all those different inputs become one tune,” he adds.
There’s also getting the nitty-gritties out of the way. “The first time we decided to team up, way back, we sat down to discuss money. We needed to be clear on how inflows worked. We never needed to have that meeting again. All it took was one meeting and the grey areas were instantly sorted,” he adds.
Besides music, perhaps one of the toughest arenas to team up in is the vibrant world of fashion. Each colour has a million different shades and each cut and form have a hundred varieties. And all of these subtle differences are then placed on a competitive field. Basically, it’s teamwork nightmare. How do you weave different opinions into one final wearable product?
New Delhi-based designer duo David Abraham and Rakesh Thakore, of Abraham and Thakore, explain how they’ve been working together for 22 years, despite not being “best friends”. “Of course, there have been differences. But we’ve known each other for so long. You either decide to get stuck with problems or you move on to create something fantastic — together. We have a deep respect for each other’s skills, methods and interpretations and I agree that it’s tough to collaborate but Rakesh and I have been fine because we take different ideas from each other, mould them into a possibility and then go ahead to create one product. As simple as that.
“Also, I’m the creative director, so yes, if there’s trouble, it’s my hammer down,” he says with a laugh. A bickering between two people have sometimes even led to major successes. Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin spent their first few days together “arguing the entire time”. The two, however, soon found themselves tag-teaming a research paper — The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine — which a few years later, turned out to be the very basis of one of the largest technology firms on the planet.
Even Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone started off fighting. “We were rivals but became great friends,” Stone explained in an interview. “But we really respected each other. When Evan left (Google for Odeo.com) I was like, ‘What?? You’re leaving me?’ So I followed him.” Twenty-first century aside, there’s also wisdom from Bollywood. Salim Khan, of the unfortunately erstwhile Salim-Javed duo, believes in “simple teamwork.”
“Respect, simple. Each one needs to consider the thought process of the other. We never allowed any ego to surpass our intentions and Javed and I understood each other perfectly and believed that our goal was after all, the perfect storyline. Also, it takes just one bewakoof to break a partnership... who believes more in himself, than the final effort.
“While we were together, we always allowed each other freedom to express ideas and then took the best of both worlds to come up with something fantastic. That’s all, simple... it is indeed the power of two and yes, it’s teamwork. Humari jodi isliye kaam kar gayi kyunki hamein apni kabiliyat aur kaam par bharosa tha.”
Teamwork then, despite the problems... works. And if the lionesses in Serengeti have worked it out, for the betterment of the herd, what’s stopping us from just, ‘being two’.
