Suffice to say, the surgeon alone cannot perform a complicated surgery; it requires a team.
He added one role that he found to be a key marker of a successful team: a "team mother". The person that celebrates the small victories. The person that remembers birthdays. The person that can read your mood and offer a ear. The person that lightens the mood when everything is tense.
I ran across my first a few years later. His output on the project was abysmal by any normal metric, but his energy and whim changed the atmosphere and overall made the team more productive. Everyone was happier when he was in. His contribution wouldn't show up on any spreadsheet, but it could be felt by the team. Years later, he went on to own multiple product teams.
KPIs and OKRs are what you fall back on when you're so disconnected from the production that you can only measure success by reducing a team or a person down to red light/green light; missing the forest for the tree.