We throw the word “team” around a lot in the business world. Areyou on the team? Is he a team player? Building the right team isimportant, but there is no blueprint that shows you how to doit.

Business leaders like the team concept of people workingtogether for a common goal. But good teams are rarely made up ofnameless, faceless participants. Great teams have to have a fewstar players to achieve success.

Occasionally people trumpet the idea of an all-star team, butstars in every position—many with big egos—rarely succeed. Do youexpect to see good baseball played in this week's Major LeagueBaseball All-Star Game? Of course, not.

Good teams have role players; ones who consistently do thelittle things that make everyone look good. We've heard a lot thelast few years about the difficulty in attracting IT people to theinsurance industry because it is perceived to be behind otherindustries and a little bi boring.

Justin Manley, CIO of Torus, doesn't believe it has to be thatway, though. He went out to other industries to find the rightcombination of players who were looking to do sharp things in whatManley believes is a changing landscape.

“One of the things I tried to do is not constrain myself byfocusing only on this [insurance] sector,” says Manley. “I lookedfor people in adjacent markets—financial services—where certaintechnical experiences could map well to what we were doing.”

For IT departments, every good team needs a CIO that understandsthe direction the enterprise is headed and how IT can provide thetools to achieve those goals. Those people, for lack of a betterterm, are the stars of the team.

Stars dream about great concepts, role players turn thoseconcepts into reality. But they can't do that themselves. They needthe programmers, the data base managers, and the help desk to keepthe powerful machine that runs their company in gear. To useanother baseball term, they need a LOOGY (Lefthanded One-Out Guy),to get out the tough lefthanded batter in a key situation.

Research continues to show the challenges insurers are facing inthe job market. Developing aggressive ideas around hiring andfinding people who will fill particular roles shouldn't be thechallenge it has turned into if the stars of the team have an eyeon the future of technology.