I originally wrote 10 Good Reasons to Hate Work Teams way back in 1998, shortly after I had decided to become an independent consultant in the area of organizational development and opened the business Pathways and Crossroads Consulting Inc. Back then eBooks, blogs and other forms of social media for publishing your thoughts and ideas were still mostly just thoughts and ideas so 10 Good Reasons was published as a booklet. It had a giant 10 on the cover with a picture of me in the middle of that 10 and my kids still ‘strike the pose’ of me in the middle of the zero and refer to the booklet as Dad’s pamphlet! Kids can be a tough audience!
I sold and used a fair number of these at the time, but like a lot of hard copy booklets, the format became problematic, even though the topic was still relevant.
It was that last point that prompted the resurfacing of 10 Good Reasons. While there are lots of writings on teams, most of them make the topic far more complex than it needs to be in my opinion. In addition, most of those writings espouse the wonderful nature of teams as if we should all yearn to be on one, or more! Closer to reality is that teams are simply a fact of organizational life and we are just as likely to yearn to be off one as on one.
10 Good Reasons to Hate Work Teams takes a little different approach. First, it’s pretty simple. The 10 reasons are not deep dark issues, but they are problems that surface all the time with teams. Second, the suggested actions to move these problems along are pretty simple too. Most teams can do great work by keeping things simple and that is the focus. Third, it’s light and hopefully a little humorous. Sometimes humor is a very good way to surface problems that can be difficult to talk about.
One thing right up front is what I mean by a team for this work. It’s a group of people that have 2 characteristics:
They meet (face to face, virtually or by some other means).
They have some common focus and output that they are responsible for.
And if you ask me to go into a more complex definition of what a team is; well then we have 11 reasons to hate work teams!
For this version of 10 Good Reasons to Hate Work Teams the text has been updated and expanded a little (but not much) and when it’s done I will no longer have my picture in the middle of a zero on the cover!
I hope you will engage with me, and the topic as this emerges; it will make this project better. Well at least if we don’t run into any of the 10 Good Reasons to Hate Work Teams! If we do however, we can use the suggested actions and see if this stuff actually helps!
I’ll be posting twice a week, usually on Tuesday and Friday mornings (Eastern time of Canada).
Let’s begin!
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