Creating World-Class Teams Internationally – Could You Be Next?

How one consultant took Perfect Teams® to South Africa and created new value for her clients.

Can a methodology developed through decades of working with people and teams be transferred to somebody else?

That was an important question for Perfect Teams®.

Because if the methodology depended upon me personally delivering it, we didn’t really have a scalable application.

We had a consultancy.

One of the earliest people to help us answer that question was Erika Harley, an organisational development consultant in South Africa.

Erika became our first international licensee.

And what happened next taught us something important.

Capability can be transferred.

ERIKA ALREADY UNDERSTOOD THE PEOPLE PROBLEM

Before starting her own consultancy, Erika had spent around 15 years working as an internal consultant within a large multinational organisation.

Her work focused on organisational development, change management, business strategy and performance.

So when she encountered Perfect Teams®, she immediately understood the problem it was trying to solve.

Organisations don’t succeed through processes alone.

They succeed through people capable of making those processes work.

And as businesses grow, understanding those people becomes increasingly important.

Who are they?

What strengths do they bring?

How do they communicate?

Who is capable of leading?

What’s missing?

Those questions were already part of Erika’s world.

Perfect Teams® gave her another way of answering them.

ONE METHODOLOGY. VERY DIFFERENT PROBLEMS.

What became particularly interesting was the variety of situations in which she began applying it.

Two of her clients could hardly have been more different.

One was a rapidly scaling data-centre business.

The other was a high-end private hotel in Cape Town.

Different sectors.

Different circumstances.

Different challenges.

But underneath both sat the same fundamental question:

Do we have the people capability we need?

GROWTH HAD OUTRUN CAPABILITY

The data-centre business was growing rapidly.

That’s usually considered a good problem to have.

Until the organisation’s capability can’t keep pace.

People were becoming stretched.

And, as often happens in growing organisations, technically capable people were being promoted into leadership roles.

The best technician becomes the supervisor.

The best specialist becomes the manager.

The best operator becomes the team leader.

But:

Technical capability isn’t leadership capability.

Being excellent at the work doesn’t automatically make somebody capable of leading the people doing it.

Using Perfect Teams® with the operations team helped start a different conversation.

What strengths already existed?

What did different people naturally contribute?

Where were the gaps?

And what capability would the organisation need as it continued to grow?

GROWTH REVEALS WHAT’S MISSING

We’ve seen this repeatedly.

When an organisation is small, capability gaps can remain hidden.

People compensate.

Founders step in.

Strong individuals carry weaker parts of the system.

But growth increases the pressure.

Eventually the gaps become visible.

That’s why:

Growth reveals the organisation.

In Erika’s data-centre client, growth was revealing a gap between technical expertise and leadership capability.

Understanding that distinction meant the organisation could begin doing something about it.

THE HOTEL HAD THE OPPOSITE PROBLEM

Erika’s hotel client had experienced disruption of a very different kind.

The hospitality industry had been hit hard during the pandemic.

Front-line employees had left or been lost.

As business returned, senior managers found themselves covering operational roles alongside their existing responsibilities.

People were stretched.

Responsibilities had become blurred.

The team felt, in their words, as though they were “running around like headless chickens.”

Here, Perfect Teams® was used differently.

The question wasn’t primarily:

Who do we need to recruit?

It was:

How do we make better use of the people we already have?

By understanding the different characters and strengths within the team, Erika could help identify who was better suited to different responsibilities and recommend how people might be redeployed.

Same methodology.

Different application.

A PROFILE SHOULD LEAD SOMEWHERE

One of Erika’s clients had previously used other profiling tools and was initially sceptical about doing another.

That’s understandable.

A profile can be interesting.

It can create an enjoyable conversation.

It can tell you something about yourself.

But then what?

The feedback Erika received highlighted something we’ve always considered important about Perfect Teams®.

The client found the outputs simpler to understand and, importantly, came away with a plan for what to do next.

That distinction matters.

Insight without application changes very little.

Understanding character is valuable.

Using that understanding to improve a team is where value is created.

FROM THEORY TO APPLICATION TO CAPABILITY

That has always been central to Perfect Teams®.

We’re not particularly interested in profiling people simply so they can acquire another label.

The question is:

What can you do with what you’ve discovered?

Can you communicate differently?

Can you allocate responsibilities more intelligently?

Can you recognise potential?

Can you identify what’s missing?

Can you develop somebody for leadership?

Can you build a stronger team?

The journey is:

Understanding → Application → Capability.

That’s where profiling becomes useful.

PERFECT TEAMS® HAD TO WORK WITHOUT ME

But Erika’s story revealed something else.

For Perfect Teams® itself to scale, the methodology had to become transferable.

Another practitioner needed to be able to understand it.

Apply it.

Explain it.

Use it with their own clients.

And create value without me being in the room.

That is a different test of intellectual property.

If an idea only works when its creator delivers it, its reach will always be limited.

If other capable practitioners can learn it and apply it successfully, the idea can travel.

South Africa was an early demonstration that Perfect Teams® could.

AND IT CREATED VALUE FOR ERIKA TOO

Perfect Teams® didn’t replace Erika’s existing consultancy.

It complemented it.

She could incorporate the methodology into work she was already doing around organisational development, strategy, change and performance.

That enabled her to offer clients something additional.

At the time this article was originally written, Erika told us that she expected the investment in incorporating Perfect Teams® into her consultancy to generate a return of around 200–300% within its first 18 months to two years.

That was her forecast at the time rather than a subsequently verified outcome.

But commercially, the principle was already clear.

The methodology wasn’t simply creating value for end clients.

It could create value for the practitioner delivering it too.

BUILDING CAPABILITY THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE

Looking back, that’s the aspect of Erika’s story that matters most.

Perfect Teams® began with decades of direct work with individuals and organisations.

Licensing asked a different question:

Can we equip somebody else to create those outcomes?

That’s another form of capability development.

First, develop the practitioner.

Then the practitioner develops leaders and teams.

Those leaders develop others.

Capability spreads.

The Ripple Effect extends another stage.

COULD YOU BE NEXT?

Today, Perfect Teams® can be used by consultants and practitioners who want to add a character-based team methodology to the work they already do.

It won’t replace their experience.

It shouldn’t.

Their judgement, relationships and professional capability remain theirs.

Perfect Teams® gives them another lens through which to understand people, teams and what’s missing.

Because ultimately the objective isn’t to distribute more profiles.

It’s to create more capable people, more capable teams and more capable organisations.

Across different businesses.

Different sectors.

And different countries.

You can’t download capability.™

Could Perfect Teams® add another capability to your consultancy?

If you work with leaders, teams or organisations and want to explore incorporating Perfect Teams® into your own practice, take a look at the Perfect Teams® Licensee Journey.

Explore the Licensee Journey →

Originally published 6 April 2022. Updated August 2026.