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45 MIN
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"In a successful team, you need people who at first don't have a clue!"

Marko Albrecht, Founder & CEO, innovative spirit of appose. We want to surprise our customers!

Podcast: Marko Albrecht and Dr. Jürgen Zehrfelder on the right mix in project teams

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How important are soft skills for the success of a team? Why should it not only consist of proven experts in the respective field?  And how do you ultimately put together the perfect team? This is one of the many topics that appose founder Marko Albrecht and Dr. Jürgen Zehrfelder discuss in this podcast. The managing partner of the management consultancy LÜDERSPARTNER GMBH, Dr. Zehrfelder is at home in many fields due to his studies in chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology and psychology - and an extremely exciting conversational partner.

Zehrfelder begins by clearing up a commonly-held misconception: "Many experts at one table do not automatically lead to a top result - in fact, the opposite is often the case." One of the reasons: If the team members theoretically all have the same training and quality, it regularly happens that hierarchy plays a significant role - and thus a lot of valuable time is lost.

"Unpleasant and surprising questions are only asked by those who initially have no idea."

How can this be prevented? According to Zehrfelder, surprisingly, the best way is with people who know as little as possible about the topic: "In a successful team, there should be at least one, if not two, people who have no idea about the topic to begin with - but are curious by nature. Because only they are capable of asking awkward and surprising questions." And it is precisely these questions, in combination with the in-depth knowledge of the experts, that lead to a whole new dynamic in problem solving - and results that a group made up entirely of experts would never have discovered.

"Not introverted lone wolves, but subject matter experts with persuasive power and a dynamism that carries others along."

It is obvious that all team members must have a high level of social competence - both among the questioners and the experts: "The experts need a certain elasticity and personal stature. They have to convince those who ask questions that what they are telling is correct. That's a very important social foundation: no introverted lone wolves, but people with persuasive power and with personal dynamism that pulls other people along."

Putting together a successful team is clearly an incredibly complex task: Different levels of expertise have to be combined with the most diverse social characteristics in such a way that everything meshes perfectly - and in most cases from a pool of people you don't really know yet.

"With appose, the likelihood that I'll assemble a team that fits my company and has the appropriate problem-solving skills is magnitudes higher."

This is where appose's algorithm comes in: "With appose, I have a completely different option. Then the probability that I will put together a team that fits me and my company and that has the appropriate problem-solving skills is orders of magnitude higher than if I make the team from my own people or from bought-in people whom I don't know at all."

How does appose solve this complex task? What data is required for this? How do freelancers also benefit from the functions? And how does the algorithm ultimately make work more enjoyable for everyone in the team? Exciting questions - which Marko Albrecht and Dr. Jürgen Zehrfelder address over the course of this interview. It's definitely worth listening in - we hope you enjoy it.

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