When you’re building a team for something you care about, it’s tempting to hire only people who already agree with you, not just on the goal but on the current approach. It feels efficient. Frictionless.

But that kind of alignment can be too smooth.

A monoculture lacks the traction needed to overcome real-world diversity. It’s like a species so perfectly adapted to one environment that it can’t evolve when the climate changes. It thrives until the moment it doesn’t.

On the other hand, if you bring together people whose views are too far apart, the team goes nowhere. Anyone who’s been stuck in the mud in Alabama knows the story: one wheel spinning, the other doing nothing. Lots of motion, no progress.

The ideal is somewhere in between. This is what car people might call positraction: both wheels turning in balance, creating forward motion even when the ground shifts beneath them.

Each person you add should bring a new point of view, but one still oriented toward the shared goal. The right mix creates a positive tension — enough difference to challenge assumptions, but enough alignment to keep momentum.

And that balance isn’t just ideological. It’s personal. The best teams mix life stages, backgrounds, and cultures. Those differences widen the range of what the group can see.

Uniformity feels easy, and conflict feels costly, but the right kind of difference is what keeps the wheels turning together.