Assuming a person wants to make the most valuable contribution to an academic or work team, they should focus on delivering the best quality of work possible. What group projects teach you is that, if you are that person, you need to protect yourself by ensuring your value is represented on paper, in terms of metrics.

In other words, appearance of value and actual value will never be the same. Yes, obviously the latter is what actually matters... unfortunately, though, institutions are generally bad at accurately measuring such a thing. If you're a good worker, it's your duty to ensure you also "succeed" at the institution level so it is you and not under-performers who advance to positions of greater responsibility.