All Color Styles are “essential” on a team, but this article will focus on our Orange friends.

When I walk into a company with few or no Orange people on the team, the atmosphere feels like death to me. Everybody is overly serious. Lists of mission statements, policies, rules, and regulations paper the walls. Whether or not the business is turning a profit is of little concern to people like me when I have to wonder what it’s like to work at a place where Oranges are not attracted to work there or, worse, not welcome.

I’m just trying to imagine what Geico commercials would be like if no Oranges made contributions to the marketing planning. The little gecko animal had to be a spontaneous brainchild of an Orange person who was looking for something fun and easy to remember.

If you look at other insurance commercials, you’ll find most of them still focus on reliability, safety, and a long tradition – admirable qualities for insurance, but uninteresting if the point is to quickly get your attention in thirty seconds.

To be fair, Orange people are rarely attracted to the insurance business, so it’s hard to recruit them. On the other hand, what is it about the business that could attract them if someone really put their mind to it?

A successful attractor of Oranges was the Primerica insurance company. Primerica’s business model was based on competing against traditional insurance, breaking old rules, moving around a lot from house to house and even town to town. Prizes in the form of rapid rank advancement and cash bonuses proved irresistible to Orange people.

And talk about teamwork! With Primerica’s business model, getting help from the “higher ups” and giving help to the “underlings” made for days filled with variety, surprises, competition, light-heartedness, and plenty of opportunities to celebrate with parties, trips, and conventions.

To tell the truth, Orange people are a little scary to traditional workers who like dependable hours, careful decision-making, steady progress, formal meetings, and so forth. Oranges break rules, think way out of the box, stay away from offices and cubicles, and even entertain coworkers in the middle of the business day with jokes and music.

What should not be scary, however, is that Oranges contribute to the bottom line every bit as well as the other Colors. And to make that happen they must feel they have the freedom to many things their own way. They usually do well because customers like them. They act fast. They don’t waste time or make customers wait for action.

So, how many Oranges are part of your team? If you have a few, how are they contributing to building your team and meeting your goals? If not many, or none, how are you coping without them?  Your comments are very welcome.

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