July 29, 2002
Teeming With Teams
I think the word "team" is being misused. The dictionary tells me that a team is simply "a number of persons associated in work or activity." That's not the definition people have in mind when they talk about teams, though. People mean something more like this: a group of interdependent individuals striving to achieve common goals. By "interdependent" I mean simply that no individual, no matter how hard or long he works, will achieve the goals on his own. At the same time, removing him leaves the group unable to achieve its goals.
Most sports teams meet this definition, as do rescue teams, search-and-destroy teams, fire teams, and kick return teams. This is not to exclude business: there are merger and acquisition teams, strategy teams, and product development teams, to name just a few.
But the word "team" has proliferated beyond its proper boundaries, and businessmen are primarily to blame. They use it in places where only its common definition can apply ("persons associated"), but they intend for it to carry the more rigorous definition, as a means of glorifying someone's accomplishments (at the expense of real accomplishments), or of connoting commitment and esprit de corps when these are absent.
Here's a typical misuse: "I want to thank Jake and his team for successfully transitioning our color copy trays from Flamingo Pink to Pale Salmon."
Listen, Jake doesn't have a team. Jake works with three other community college students to keep our copiers going. We employee four of them so the work gets done faster, not because each plays some integral role in a well-oiled machine. In fact, the closest thing to a team that Jake has ever led is two chaotic-good elves and a neutral half-dwarf in his high school Dungeons and Dragons tournament.
This is just one type of misuse of the word "team" in a business setting. Another is to congratulate someone for his team's effort (usually his name is Rick or Chad or something else appropriately button-down crypto-fascist frat-boy) when in reality his employees did all the work, and were largely productive precisely because he wasn't involved. Thus are the ideas of team and leadership further sullied.
In many cases a businessman intends the word "team" to be a form of code, a signal that at one time he was the starting tight end for the Weehauken Red Raiders 2-A championship football team. He's also the guy who, in times of business downturn, talks about the need to "get back to blocking and tackling," so we can "make some first downs," instead of "always trying for the hail mary." He and the other high school football heroes hold close quarters in the hallway, swapping football metaphors and watching Jake with beady eyes, pondering how much it will help the bottom line to cut his "team" in half. There's always casualties in war, you know, and football is war, and business is football. Or something like that.
War, of course, is the other great fount of moronic business metaphors, from the obvious, as in "we're going to make a full frontal assault on their share of the novelty yo-yo market"; to the more subtle, like "sales force," which evokes an image of waves of guys named Dirk wading up the beaches of Normandy in their pleated slacks and Bill Blass golf shirts, armed with lattes and dainty mobile phones, to sell SUV's and water filtration systems to the Huns.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for teamwork (and invading France, for that matter). But some work groups simply aren't teams. Calling five accountants in the trading group a team, even though they rarely communicate and have little interdependence, merely cheapens the word.
I know, I know, in the great scheme of things we are all interconnected, one big hypernetworked goo pot of multicultural interdisciplinary cross-trained teammates, synergizing ourselves into some kind of post-Hegelian wet dream. But in the great scheme of things people who talk that way tend to be the targets of atomic wedgies, and get crammed upside down into their gym lockers. In short, they tend not to be good teammates.
All I'm asking, in this new age of corporate transparency, is that we apply a little of our newfound honesty to what we call ourselves. Not every work group is a team, any more than every secretary is an administrative assistant, or every businessman an entrepreneur. Some people just work together, some just fetch coffee, and some just spend down the assets built by others. There's no point in confusing things with bad labeling.
Who's with me? Remember folks, there's no I in T-E-A-M.
Posted by Woodlief on July 29, 2002 at 04:07 PM
i think the use of the word 'team' in business is supposed to create a sense of belonging, and eagerness to accomplish the goal (i'm not saying it's effective, only that is what i think the usage is trying to achieve).
personally, i'd rather be thought of by my boss as a member of a successful team than as a nameless faceless drone in a cubicle.
but business often mis (or over-) uses words of the english language. see paradigm, outside the box, pushing the envelope, etc.
Posted by: skippy at July 29, 2002 7:34 PM
I have no teen spirit and am proud of it. However, for a sufficient amount of money I can pretend.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at July 29, 2002 7:54 PM
Andrea, your Nirvana is showing.
Posted by: Tony Woodlief at July 29, 2002 9:36 PM
"In fact, the closest thing to a team that Jake has ever led is two chaotic-good elves and a neutral half-dwarf in his high school Dungeons and Dragons tournament."
LOL! I work with this guy.
I remember in college, there was a huge buzz about collaborative teamwork as the future of business, and the death of heroic leadership. This was just before the Japanese economy went into the gutter, so place it around the late eighties or early nineties.
Many moons and three careers later, I've seen enough crap flow from "collaborative teams" to reassure my deeply held beliefs that real teamwork is everyone doing what I tell them.
Posted by: hbchrist at July 29, 2002 9:48 PM
Michael Novak in NRO has an article about the folks who worked together for the miner rescue in Pa. Would you consider them a "team"? Mr. Novak used the term several times.
I think in this case it was proper, in that the people involved had a common goal, subjugated their selfish desires, had a clear understanding of who the leaders were, and the leaders performed effectively. In many of the "team" situations we are in, one or more of those four points are missing, taking the team concept with it.
Posted by: MarcV at July 30, 2002 12:12 PM
Great post! I think "teamwork" is based on something far more fraudulent. It is as if repeating mantras, such as "teamwork, synergy, and innovation," will somehow permeate an organization and infuse its workers with new values. If you repeat something enough times, it becomes true, however meaningless.
Besides, teamwork blurs responsibility and makes everyone feel warm and fuzzy. In the same way politicians are "for the children," businessmen are for "teamwork."
Posted by: Naomi at July 30, 2002 4:20 PM
Working for a large corporation in a former life, I found that Rick or Chad are careerists getting their tickets punched as they move up the corporate ladder.
The "team" is to validate Rick or Chad's "leadership." If things go right, our careerists get all the credit while the other "team" participants are punished for being "followers instead of leaders."
If things go badly, Rick or Chad are far more skilled at office politics. They'll back-stabbingly attribute the failures to you instead of taking responsibility themselves.
Remember the motto of the office politician: kiss ass upwards, kick ass downwards.
Posted by: Greg Hlatky at July 30, 2002 6:11 PM
My lord, you guys must work for some massively overlarded corporations. Team, as Tony is using it here, is indeed over-used. But, pray tell, what would any of you have us hideous salarymen replace it with? There has to be a word for people who work together day in and day out producing something for external consumption. Members of the team come and go, but the goal is pretty much the same, regardless of the individual members. When the goal is met, either the team is disbanded or a new goal is set.
Sorry, but I can't get a good huff-and-puff worked up about this. And I never played football, thank you very much. Tennis was my game - girls in short skirts assured the beginning of the arc of my sports career, just as a "drink cart" on the links assured the end of it.
Posted by: Scott at July 30, 2002 8:34 PM
"But, pray tell, what would any of you have us hideous salarymen replace it with? There has to be a word for people who work together day in and day out producing something for external consumption."
Sure there is. EMPLOYEES.
Don't sugarcoat it, don't pretty it up, don't bullshit me. I'm here to get a job done, not work on my team-building skills.
I agree that most jobs require a collective effort. Sales needs to get correct data to Engineering needs to generate correct specs for Production needs to appropriately schedule jobs (etc.) But to credit a manager whilst simultaneously reducing everyone else to a "member" is infuriating. If you absolutely need to credit a grouping of employees, thank them all equally.
Personally, I don't give a care if my boss thinks of me as a golden god or a "nameless faceless drone". I know what I do for my company, and I have plenty of documentation to remind him/her at review time.
Posted by: disconnect at July 31, 2002 1:38 PM
Very impactful analysis, Tony. This was especially good:
Another is to congratulate someone for his team's effort (usually his name is Rick or Chad or something else appropriately button-down crypto-fascist frat-boy) when in reality his employees did all the work, and were largely productive precisely because he wasn't involved.
My opinion is that the way to incentivize the team is for managers to leave team members alone, especially if said team members are working on the weekend. Stay out of the way. I can order my own pizza.
Posted by: Craig Schamp at July 31, 2002 7:12 PM
"Who's with me? Remember folks, there's no I in
T-E-A-M."
But there is an I in W-I-N.
Posted by: Jessica at March 31, 2003 9:20 PM
