Everyone Wants Ronaldo or Messi
There’s always that one player everyone wants on the field.
In most cases, it’s Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. Proven. Reliable. Experienced.
You don’t question what he brings. You question what happens around him:
- Does the team become too dependent?
- Do others get enough room to step up?
- What changes if younger players take more responsibility?
That’s the real dilemma.
Now bring that into a Workday project. Hiring often follows the same instinct:
“When in doubt, go for experience.”
It feels like the safest way to reduce risk. And in some moments, it absolutely is.
But projects don’t just need safety. They need flow, clarity, and the ability to scale when things pick up pace.
And that’s where the balance between experience and potential starts to matter.
Table of Contents
- Why Experience Feels Like the Right Answer
- What Potential Brings That Teams Often Underestimate
- The Real Issue: Misalignment
- Different Roles, Different Expectations
- Timing: The Part That Changes Everything
- A Practical Way to Think About Your Team
- Signs Your Team Mix Needs Attention
- What Happens When the Balance Is Off
- Building for Today and What Comes After
- Your Lineup Is the Strategy
Experienced hires bring structure to uncertainty.
They’ve handled messy requirements.
They know how to navigate stakeholders.
They can make decisions without needing too much time or direction.
In the early stages of a Workday project, this is critical.
When everything is still taking shape, you need people who can:
- Define the approach
- Set expectations
- Prevent avoidable mistakes
For example, in a global implementation, an experienced lead can quickly align business and technical teams, avoiding weeks of back-and-forth.
That kind of clarity is hard to replace.
But over time, something starts to shift.
When too much responsibility sits with experienced hires:
- Work begins to bottleneck around them
- Every decision waits for the same few people
- Costs increase without a matching increase in output
The team looks strong. But it doesn’t always move fast.
Now look at the other side.
Less experienced or high-potential team members keep the work moving and depend on seniors for guidance.
They bring:
- Energy and pace
- Willingness to learn quickly
- Flexibility when things change
In a Workday team, this becomes very practical. Think about phases like configuration, testing, or data validation.
These require:
- Consistency
- Volume
- Attention to detail
If senior team members are doing all of this, progress slows.
But when junior and mid-level professionals are involved with the right structure:
- Work moves faster
- Seniors stay focused on decisions and problem-solving
- The overall team becomes more efficient
This is where many teams miss opportunities.
Potential is about creating space for the entire team to perform better. Of course, potential needs direction. Without it:
- Work can become inconsistent
- Confidence drops
- Dependency increases again
So the value is how junior talent is supported, trained and integrated into the team.
When a Workday project starts to slow down, the first instinct is to question the people.
- Are they skilled enough?
- Did we hire the right profiles?
- Do we need stronger talent?
But if you look closely, that’s rarely where the problem sits. Most teams don’t fail because of capability. They struggle because the team wasn’t aligned with the work it was supposed to do. This shows up in small, everyday ways.
- A senior team member ends up spending hours on routine configuration because no one else feels confident enough to take it on.
- A junior team member waits for feedback that takes days, not because the work is complex, but because the people who need to review it are already stretched thin.
Nothing is technically “wrong.” But everything starts taking longer than it should.
It’s similar to developing a young footballer into a world-class striker. Neither Cristiano Ronaldo nor Lionel Messi became among the greatest players overnight. Early in their careers, both were talented young players with immense potential, but it was years of training, guidance, opportunity, and the right environment that helped them reach the highest level of the game. Their journeys highlight an important truth: potential, when nurtured and trusted, can be transformed into exceptional capability.
Now imagine placing a player like Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi in a role where they spend most of their time tracking back and defending. They can do it, and they may even do it well, but it limits where they create the greatest value for the team. Their strengths lie in creating opportunities, driving attacks, and influencing the game in ways few others can.
At the same time, a successful team cannot rely solely on its established stars. If younger players are never trusted with responsibility, they never gain the experience needed to develop into the next generation of match-winners. Growth comes from allowing potential to prove itself.
The balance breaks not because of talent, but because of how it’s used.
The same thing happens in project teams.
When roles aren’t clearly defined, or when hiring doesn’t match the phase of the project:
- Experienced hires get pulled into execution work
- Junior team members hesitate to take ownership
- Mid-level talent gets stuck between direction and delivery
Work starts overlapping, then decisions get delayed, and tasks get revisited more than once. And over time, expectations begin to drift.
Leaders expect speed because the team looks strong on paper. The team feels pressure because the work isn’t flowing as it should. That gap between expectation and reality is where frustration builds.
What makes this tricky is that it doesn’t look like a clear problem. There’s no single point of failure.
Just a constant sense that things should be moving faster. And that’s the real issue.
Not capability. Not effort.
Just a team that hasn’t been aligned with how the work actually needs to happen.
A Workday team isn’t one type of work. It’s a mix of responsibilities that require different levels of experience. When this is clear, hiring decisions become much easier.
Strategic Roles (Architects, Leads)
- These roles shape direction.
- They deal with ambiguity, stakeholder alignment, and critical decisions.
- Experience is essential here.
Execution Roles (Configurators, Analysts)
This is where most of the work happens.
A balanced mix works best:
- Mid-level professionals bring consistency
- Junior talent increases speed and bandwidth
Support Roles (Testing, Data, Admin)
These roles drive volume and stability.
With clear processes, high-potential talent performs very well here and helps the team scale without adding pressure on senior members.
When roles are defined properly, something important happens: You stop over-hiring experience where it isn’t needed.
Even the right people can feel like the wrong fit if they’re brought in at the wrong stage.
Workday projects move through clear phases, and each phase demands a different kind of contribution. When hiring aligns with these phases, workflows naturally align.
Here’s how that typically plays out:
Pre-Signature (Phase 0): Strategy & Alignment
Before anything begins, the focus is on clarity.
This is where decisions shape everything that follows, what the transformation looks like, what success means, and how the project will be governed.
At this stage, experienced professionals are critical. You need people who can:
- Think strategically
- Ask the right questions
- Assess risks early
- Align stakeholders with confidence
Bringing in execution-heavy profiles too early doesn’t help here, and what you need is direction.
Plan, Design & Architect (Phase 1): Future-State Design
Now the project starts taking form.
Requirements are gathered.
Processes are designed.
The system architecture begins to take shape.
This phase still leans heavily on experience and collaboration.
You need people who can:
- Translate business needs into workable designs
- Balance technical and functional decisions
- Build a roadmap that teams can actually follow
Mid-level talent starts to play a stronger role here, supporting design while learning the context.
Configure & Prototype: System Build
This is where the workload expands.
Configuration begins.
Integrations are built.
Reports and dashboards take shape.
Now, execution matters just as much as direction.
A well-balanced team works best here:
- Senior professionals guide and unblock
- Mid-level talent drives consistent delivery
- Junior team members handle structured tasks with support
If this phase is too senior-heavy, progress slows. If it’s too junior-heavy, quality starts to slip. Balance is what keeps things moving.
Test & Deploy: Validation & Go-Live
This phase is all about readiness.
Testing cycles increase.
Data migration becomes critical.
Users need to be trained and supported.
The work becomes more detailed and time-sensitive.
Here, you need:
- Strong coordination
- Clear processes
- Enough bandwidth to handle volume
Junior and support roles become especially valuable in handling testing, data validation, and user support, while experienced team members focus on issue resolution and decision-making.
Business as Usual (Phase X): Optimisation & Adoption
Once the system goes live, the focus shifts again.
Now it’s about:
- Stabilising the platform
- Supporting users
- Improving processes over time
This phase benefits from a steady mix:
- Experienced professionals guiding improvements
- Mid-level and junior team members supporting operations, reporting, and enhancements
It’s also where long-term capability really starts to show.
The Key Insight
Each phase asks for something different. But when hiring is out of sync with these phases, pressure builds quickly. And that pressure shows up in timelines, quality, and team morale.
Timing determines whether your team moves smoothly or struggles to keep up.
Instead of asking: “Should we hire senior or junior talent?”
Shift the question slightly:
- What kind of work is increasing right now?
- Where is the team getting stuck?
- Who should ideally be handling this work?
Most high-performing teams follow a simple structure:
- A small group setting direction
- A strong middle layer executing consistently
- A scalable base handling volume
This keeps work flowing without overloading any one layer.
You don’t always need metrics to see it.
The signs are usually visible in day-to-day work.
- Senior team members are pulled into routine tasks
- Juniors are waiting too long for decisions
- Work gets reassigned frequently
- Deadlines feel tight despite having enough people
These are signals that work isn’t distributed well.
The impact shows up quickly and spreads across the project.
- Too many seniors → higher costs, slower execution
- Too many juniors → delays, rework, dependency
- Poor distribution → confusion, stress, missed timelines
And over time:
- Budgets stretch
- Stakeholder confidence drops
- Teams feel burned out
A Workday project doesn’t end at go-live.
The way your team is built affects what happens next.
When experienced professionals actively guide others:
- Knowledge gets shared
- Teams become more capable
- Future hiring becomes easier and more targeted
You’re building long-term capability for a successful delivery.
Coming back to the football analogy: A team doesn’t win because it has the best individual player. It wins because the lineup works together at the right time.
Workday hiring works the same way. It’s not about choosing experience or potential. It’s about understanding where each one fits, and when it creates the most impact.
Before your next hire, take a closer look at your current team:
- Where is the pressure building?
- Where is experience being overused?
- Where could potential make things easier?
Because the difference between a team that struggles and a team that scales often comes down to one thing:
How well the lineup is designed.
Of course, there’s no perfect formula. Every project is different, and every team has its own challenges.
But if you’d like to see how these principles played out in a real Workday programme, we’ve captured the journey in our latest case study.
