Dream teams, team dreams
About a year ago I went through a phase of wondering whether I might make a good management consultant. My thought at the time was that such experience might help me when I eventually set up my own business: I was very much a scientist and not at all a businessman, so that seemed a good way to build up the business side of things.
I made some contacts at McKinsey and BCG, applied and went for a day of interviews with BCG. By the end of that day I was boiling with desire to get out very quickly and never go anywhere near a management consultancy again. I found something fundamentally and instinctively repulsive about the way they worked, although I found it hard to put my finger on it.
Fast forward to the present: I started my business anyway, without the consultancy background (I gained some business awareness through the excellent Ignite programme instead), and at the moment I’m reading the book Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. It is an excellent manifesto on how to build a company (such as a software company) which relies on the intelligence and creativity of its people. The one-sentence summary might be: People in your organisation are human beings, not parts of a machine; with a good working and social environment, they will enjoy what they do and do an excellent job.
One of the key phenomena which the authors identify with success are what they call “jelled teams”. They define this as: “[...] a group of people so strongly knit that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” (p. 123) and “Jelled teams are marked by a strong sense of identity. [...] There is a sense of eliteness on a good team. Team members feel they’re part of something unique. [...] There is invariably a feeling of joint ownership of the product built by the jelled team. [...] The individual is eager for peer review. [...] The final sign of a jelled team is the obvious enjoyment that people take in their work. Jelled teams just feel healthy. The interactions are easy and confident and warm.” (p. 127)
I have had the privilege of being part of a jelled team before, particularly with Johannes Hauser and Alex Heß, so I immediately knew what they were talking about. And it is probably one of my main ambitions in life to work in jelled teams again and again — the positive inter-personal experience is worth so much more than money or any other benefit.
And this is where my thoughts return to the management consultancies mentioned at the start. One thing which struck me about them is how they try so very hard to prevent any team jell from occurring. They constantly talk about teams, but for them, this week’s team is a completely different one from last week’s; the tasks and goals change abruptly; any social bonds which might have formed between people during a project are deliberately broken up; and there is just no way, no way ever, that an exciting and genuinely enjoyable team can form. Their definition of team seems to be “several randomly selected, competitive individuals, working under high pressure on a common project”, whereas my definition of team is more like “a group of friends who want to accomplish something together and have fun in the process”. And my definition is very much what I’m aiming for in our company.
Finally an interesting and inspiring quote on the subject of trust in teams — an extremely important matter, presented here with a philosophical slant:
“Once you’ve decided to go with a given group, your best tactic is to trust them. Any defensive measure taken to guarantee success in spite of them will only make things worse. It may give you some relief from worry in the short term, but it won’t help in the long run, and it will poison any chance for the team to jell. [...]
Most managers give themselves excellent grades on knowing when to trust their people and when not to. But in our experience, too many managers err on the side of mistrust. They follow the basic premise that their people may operate completely autonomously, as long as they operate correctly. This amounts to no autonomy at all. The only freedom that has any meaning is the freedom to proceed differently from the way your manager would have proceeded. This is true in a broader sense, too: The right to be right (in your manager’s eyes or your government’s eyes) is irrelevant; it’s only the right to be wrong that makes you free.”
– Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister: Peopleware, p. 133-134
Only yesterday I read that only 20% of all companies actually care about ideas for improvement which come from their own employees (who do the company work all day long) whereas about 90% have during the last five years implemented ideas from outside consultants (who only sneak in for two weeks to do fuzzy Powerpoint stuff). It’s a miracle that our economic system still runs…
Comment by Johannes — Tuesday, 27 November 2007, 17:15 GMT
I can’t agree more with the idea that “jelled teams” provide a more stable, supportive, enjoyable and productive working environment than the alternatives, which so many people have to put up with day in and day out.
However, surely in the current global economic environment, such teams will inevitably become less and less common - workers are increasingly being forced to act as individuals, with little hope of financial (and other) support from increasingly cash-strapped firms, welfare-resistant governments, distant families, and empty communities. Workers are called on to work on a project basis, and then as soon as a product is launched (the design and construction of a particular car, a software programme, a consultancy exercise, an advert - and note that these are all *growing* industries), the worker leaves the project, is alone, and has to search for participation in a new project. With globalisation forcing firms to be increasingly competitive and to lay off workers with declining productiving, and with globalisation making project-based work more possible (travelling and communicating over long distances), I wonder whether any successful firm can provide such a stable working environment for its employees. Your example of the consultancy firm may be the way forward.
Perhaps an alternative focus might be on the non-workplace institutions (such as unions) which may help workers to both socialise with those who have chosen the same career sector, and to find alternative employment within that sector when the time, inevitably, comes. Firms like Google which appear to provide a supportive environment for its employees only do so as long as those employees are profitable - it is only the support networks of Silicon Valley (or the consultancy sector, or the construction sector, or “adland” in Soho) which can provide real support in uncertain times.
Comment by Rob — Wednesday, 28 November 2007, 11:42 GMT
Thanks for your comment Rob. I agree that it’s a sad reality that many people are forced to work in environments with little or no social cohesion. However, I find it quite a bleak vision of the world to think that this lifestyle is inevitable and increasing. I would at least like to think that the world was better than that, but maybe it’s not — I don’t know.
The argument which this book makes (and I’m very much inclined to agree) is that although the competitive economy and flexible working are real and will not go away, pushing people harder and making them unhappy will not actually make a business successful. Many of us are “knowledge workers” — working in an industry where creativity, intelligence and knowledge are your main business (as opposed to manual work). The most important thing for such a company is that it has bright people, and that these people are able to think. If people are unhappy (because their family is far away, they don’t have real friends, they feel they are being squeezed and not rewarded properly, whatever) they can’t concentrate properly, therefore be less productive, and probably the best people will soon leave for somewhere more pleasant. And good people are very hard to replace. Therefore it ought to be in a business’ very best interests to provide an environment which is supportive, friendly, enjoyable etc. Pushing people too hard might give some short-term gains, but is absolutely unsustainable in the longer view.
It probably depends on the industry. Maybe in consultancy people are in fact so replaceable that a high turnover does not matter. But if that is indeed true, I can only conclude that consultancy is essentially of the same nature as unskilled manual labour (except that there are more people with MBAs walking around). Might be the right thing for some people, but not for me!
Of course the socialising outside work which you mention is very important and not something which can be replaced. I just think that the work ought to be fun too, not just the leisure time.
Comment by Martin — Friday, 30 November 2007, 18:03 GMT