It is very tempting to want to pry a star performer from a competitor, but Michael J. Mauboussin argues, at Harvard Business Review, that can be a foolish approach:

[T]here is a tendency to prize a few standout individuals while ignoring how much they draw on their surrounding systems for support. For instance, many companies, sports teams, and entertainment businesses hire a star when they want to quickly improve the organization’s results. More often than not, however, newly transplanted stars fail to deliver, because they’re separated from the people, structures, and norms that helped make them great in the first place. In one study, professors from Harvard Business School tracked more than 1,000 acclaimed equity analysts over a decade and monitored how their performance changed when they switched firms. The dour conclusion of the research: “When a company hires a star, the star’s performance plunges, there is a sharp decline in the functioning of the group or team the person works with, and the company’s market value falls.”

Read When Individuals Don’t Matter here.

(H/t Henry Abbott)