Just something I was thinking about today...

If any of you has discussed business with me, you will know that I have very strong opinions about We vs. I. I believe that there is an inherent WEakness in team dynamics. Throughout my business career, I have repeatedly seen teams break down when the skill/knowledge levels are not relatively equal. In business, when a 'star performer' is introduced to the team, they become the target of immense amounts of negative behavior as all of the other team members scramble to assert their value to the team as a whole. Never mind the fact that the non-performers now have the perfect excuse to stop working all together, knowing that the star will make the team as a whole succeed even in the wake of their non-performance.

Why is this? I've often wondered, and I think today I came upon a hypothesis. Business is not a sport. In sports, a team is necessary because no one individual can fulfill all the roles across the team. So in sports, a star is welcomed mostly because it means that the team wins as a whole, and everyone may or may not be compensated additionally due to the winning record. (The significance here is that salary structures for most sports are completely different from the salary structure of most businesses).

Secondly, in most business teams (departments), all of the individuals are doing the same job. So one individual COULD come in and fulfill all the roles across the team. Easy case to make - helpdesk. It becomes obvious very quickly who the star performers are, especially when things such as first call closure is measured. I can tell you that the worst thing in the world for a helpdesk is a star performer. They wind up being at the bottom of a whole lot of brown stinky stuff being piled on them simply because they can produce.

Management often does a great deal to exacerbate this by publicly praising the star performer, yet consistently delivering 'punishment' to the entire team for failure. This only spurs the star to 'work harder' to save the team as a whole, meanwhile earning the wrath and/or apathy of their co-workers.

Because a lot of how we operate in life is determined by the prose that we use to describe it, I think I've come up with a term for business that espouses my philosophy/management style. Instead of teams, I want to (and have) built groups of 'cooperative individual performers.' Groups are expected to solve problems, but the dynamics of it are such that no two people in any business group perform the same role and/or possess the same skill (aka, they need each other to succeed) management makes it clear that everyone is paid for their individual performance.

Homogenizing the workforce by creating 'salary bands', 'job titles' and other arbitrary aggregations without recognition of what each individual brings to the table is one of the factors that, in my opinion, kills productivity and stifles creativity.

OK, that's enough of that, just wanted to get that out of my head and on to an archival medium.

Ciao for now.