When Your "Band of Misfits" Becomes an Engineering Powerhouse
Your most unconventional team member might be your secret weapon. Your weirdest hire could drive your biggest breakthrough. Ready to stop building cookie-cutter teams?
This week on Herding Squirrels, Val Akkapeddi (Director of Engineering at Collectors) builds some eye-opening models about why the quirkiest teams often deliver the most extraordinary results.
What You'll Discover:
The Don Quixote Leadership Philosophy - Why chasing your own windmills (even when others think you're crazy) leads to innovation that actually matters
The Biometric Backend Miracle - How a team of "adjacent skills" rebuilt an entire system in one month by becoming each other's confidence boost instead of competing for credit
The Scaling Leadership Trap - Why brilliant individual contributors crash and burn when they can't flip from "I have all the answers" to "let the team find their way"
The Tower vs. Glue Paradox - How career advice focused on "building your tower higher" is killing team performance (and what to do instead)
Plus, Val spontaneously builds the most revealing model we've ever seen about workplace culture—showing exactly why individual advancement destroys collective success.
The bottom line? Your best teams aren't the most qualified ones. They're the ones weird enough to try something different and connected enough to lift each other up while doing it.
Watch Val transform abstract leadership concepts into tangible insights, including the moment they literally flip their advice model upside down to show what real leadership looks like.
Episode Timeline
[00:00:00] - Introduction to Herding Squirrels podcast and guest Val Akkapeddi, Director of Engineering at Collectors
[00:00:36] - First LEGO build: Val creates a Don Quixote-inspired model with lance, representing their love for "tilting at windmills"
[00:02:53] - Discussion of Val's philosophy: chase your own vision regardless of whether others see it, find your windmill and pursue it
[00:03:38] - Second LEGO build: Val's best team experience - the "B Team" at Clear with diverse skill sets connected by strong culture
[00:05:17] - Story of rebuilding an entire biometric backend in one month through unconventional team composition and mutual support
[00:07:00] - Analysis of how "glue contributors" and culture made a "band of misfits" into an engineering powerhouse
[00:09:44] - Exploration of why being quirky, unbalanced, and non-standard drives innovation and different outcomes
[00:11:48] - Third LEGO build: Val's worst team experience showing a scaling failure with single-point-of-control leadership
[00:13:00] - Discussion of how brilliant leaders can fail when they can't let go of control as teams scale
[00:15:07] - Deep dive into letting teams "evolve as a glorious mess" and the challenge of releasing control
[00:18:52] - Analysis of the most destructive workplace dynamic: individual tower-building vs. lifting each other up
[00:20:00] - Val spontaneously builds a model contrasting selfish career advancement with collaborative team support
[00:22:06] - Final LEGO build: Val's advice for new technical leaders, flipping from individual expert to team connector
[00:24:12] - Val's reflection on building with LEGO as a way to make abstract thoughts concrete and touchable
Key Themes Explored
Tilting at Windmills: The power of pursuing your unique vision even when others don't understand or see it
Culture as Foundation: How strong team culture enables diverse, unconventional teams to achieve extraordinary results
Scaling Leadership Crisis: Why brilliant individual contributors often fail as leaders when they can't release control
Glorious Mess Philosophy: Embracing organized chaos and letting teams evolve their own structures and approaches
Individual vs. Team Success: The toxic dynamic of building personal towers vs. lifting the entire team up
Innovation Through Quirkiness: How non-standard approaches and "bands of misfits" drive breakthrough results
Notable Quotes
"Find your windmill and chase it... The only thing that's going to make you happy is something that comes from you."
"Culture really is the thing that makes a team work. The technology that you use, the tools, the processes, all of those can evolve. Culture and the team, being invested in each other's success and uplifting everybody's contributions—if you can get that story right, everything else falls into place."
"Let it evolve as a glorious mess... Let the team find their own structure."
"Don't be invested in people doing things the way that you would have done... Show them the problem, let them figure it out and let them tell you what the problem is that they should be solving."
"Find a way to become the glue and bring others to the table to let their contribution shine."
About the Guest
Val Akkapeddi is currently the Director of Engineering at Collectors, leading high-performing engineering teams. They believe in building culture as the foundation of strong teams and enjoy being a hands-on contributor to driving ambitious technical vision. Val is passionate about security research, gaming, running D&D campaigns, and finding unconventional approaches to complex problems.
Find Val on LinkedIn.
About Herding Squirrels
Herding Squirrels is a podcast about modern teams, hosted by Brandon Wetzstein. Through LEGO® Serious Play® methodology and engaging conversations, the podcast explores the nuances of effective teamwork, leadership, and collaboration in today's evolving workplace.
