The town elders met on the first Monday of every month to plan the bridge. Every month the drawings got better. Someone brought stone. Someone brought a cantilever. Someone came back with a version cheaper and prettier than anything before, the room applauded, and they agreed to meet again.
A year of Mondays went by.
The river stayed uncrossed.
That winter the woman who kept the minutes stopped coming.
She spent her evenings laying planks across the trunk of the fallen oak and screwing down a handrail, badly.
It was the worst design anyone had proposed.
By March the whole town was using it.
Teams like the elders are common.
Belbin Team Roles sets out nine roles a working team needs, and the one this town lacked is the Completer Finisher. The Completer Finisher cares about the last unglamorous mile and the handrail.
Teams built by people hiring in their own image oversupply one role and stop seeing the others.
What the Belbin tool counts is which of the nine nobody is holding.
That is often the most valuable insight.