Surrounding yourself with people you trust

Whilst I agree with what Rob is saying in principle, the implication is to choose the ideal team based complementing skill-sets and then integrate personal relationships into a high performance team. However, he now runs the risk of creating a mini bureaucracy within an organisation where the team the individual personally selects turns into a best mate’s club full of yes men.

I have seen this occur all too often where dysfunctional relationships trump skills and knowledge to replace competency with nepotism. I am experiencing this exact phenomenon in my current workplace where the organisational culture has deteriorating to such a level, highly competent are seeking new employment opportunities due to this leadership vacuum.

Hard working competent people are at risk of losing their jobs while inefficiencies abound based on religious and pseudo-family values; this is an occupation, not a religious club of best friends. This plays very poorly on the organisation, how do they not see the incompetence playing out before them?