[aero142]

I'm a bit late responding, but I'll answer anyway. I did read the article and believe I am disagreeing with the author's core point.

In the roofing example, the roof installer is passionate about roofing shingles, but the home owner doesn't have to care about it because he found a roofer who does care. If the roofer is good with people and passionate, but doesn't know the difference between types of shingles, you aren't going to get a good roof. In this case, understanding people is NOT more important that understanding shingles. The expertise of the roofer is what allows the homeowner to not have to care about shingle. But the expert roofer is the rare item. Every random person on the street wants to not have to care, but the expert roofer is rare. I bet business is booming.

For the team example, it's a straw-man that I don't want to conceded to the author. Sure, in some imaginary land, there is a motivated and skilled team that is force to use terrible technology but somehow overcomes this. This is not a useful description. In my experience, skilled teams are experts at choosing and understanding their tools to make technology. For skilled craftspeople, working with others is important and required, but so is being a skilled expert. The expert part is usually more rare than the people part.

The problem I have with the author is that they have picked two poor examples to support a misleading title. In my experience, companies are fully of people who say they understand people, but there is a skilled group with their doors closed making thing work. One day those people leave, and the people running around saying people are more important than technology are suddenly confused why things stopped getting done.