Treating Trauma In Team Land

Management Review Magazine / September 1997

The old adage claims that a camel is a horse designed by committee. What makes us think a team can do better?

It's the era of teamwork. A team of empowered employees can make better decisions than people working alone can because teams include the participation and brainpower of numerous informed workers.

At least, that's the theory. The theory has spawned teams galore. Cross-functional teams, project- development teams, planning teams, you-name-it teams. Is there anyone out there who hasn't participated on a team? Is there anyone who hasn't felt slightly disappointed that their team didn't produce the high-performance miracles that supposedly only a team can accomplish?

The problem isn't with teamwork per se. Teamwork (1 looked it up in Webster's) occurs when a group of individuals each "subordinate personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole." How many "teams" have you been on that actually do that? Too many teams are really committees in disguise, filled with individuals harboring personal agendas and sharing no common purpose. The dirty little secret in this era of teaming is that too many teams fail to practice teamwork. The inevitable fallout: hump-backed camels instead of competitive stallions.

I suspect there were a lot of humps at the old IBM, which had a quaint corporate custom surrounding "concurrence." If anyone on a Big Blue team spoke up to say they "non-concurred," the whole group process stopped and the decision was postponed until that person was convinced that "concurrence" was the right decision. No wonder IBM's time-honored motto is Think. Clearly action was secondary.

There's a tendency in this kinder, gentler era of participative management to imagine that everyone has to a get in on the decision making. Monsanto certainly believed this. "We would have 30 meetings to gain approval for something," their corporate trainer told an AMA meeting. "We thought this was participative management, but it was really paralysis by analysis."

Arguing recalcitrant coworkers into agreement. Paralysis by analysis. If IBM and Monsanto, both benchmarkable companies, can fall into these traps, the rest of us should look very carefully at our own team processes.

Martha H. Peak
Group Editor, AMA Magazines

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