No More Teams! Mastering the Dynamics of Creative Collaboration

Introduction: No More Teams!--An Organizational Manifesto Why don*t teams make sense? What could possibly be wrong with more and better teamwork? In an ideal world, absolutely nothing. But we don't live in an ideal world: we live in this one. At a job interview, a friend was asked if he was a "team player." "Yes," he replied, "team captain." That story--which happens to be true--invariably gets a good laugh. But it is a cynical and knowing laugh. Everyone in the room understands precisely what most organizations mean by "team players." Quite simply, the word team has been so politicized, so ensnared in the pathology of the organization, that we don't really know what it means anymore. Is a team a medium to manage value? Or a mechanism to play politics? It's easy to answer "Both." Of course, in that case, a team means whatever the organization wants it to mean. Which means, of course, that it has no real meaning at all. It is, however, the popular management metaphor of the moment. But is it the right metaphor? Is it a metaphor we should be building-- and rebuilding--our organizations around? Does this metaphor create more understanding than confusion? The answer to all these questions, unfortunately, is no. The concept of teams obscures, rather than reveals, the real relationship challenges our organizations face. Teams are a fiction, a verbal convenience, rather than a useful description of how people in a firm cooperate and collaborate to create value. Even worse, teams make it too easy for organizations to lie, cheat, and kid themselves about the way they work. More often than not, a "team" is as much a political entity as a value creating one. The word is a little too flexible, too malleable, too manipulable. Are you on the team? . . . Or not? Is that a question centered on creating value for customers and clients or is it meant to satisfy the insecurities of a manager checking on the loyalty of his people? The answers reveal an awful lot about what "teamwork" and "team players" really mean in today's organizations--and tomorrow's.No More Teams!is a book that insists that organizations literally can't afford to design themselves around words that are dangerously ambiguous. The issue isn't teams; it's what kind of relationships organizations need to create and maintain if they want to deliver unique value to their customers and clients. That's what this book is about. No More Teams!is the revised, updated, and improved version ofShared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration. The change of title is only the most obvious difference. In fact, this is a fundamentally different and better book than its predecessor. It's crisper, smarter, and more relevant for managers. TheSchrage, Michael is the author of 'No More Teams! Mastering the Dynamics of Creative Collaboration' with ISBN 9780385476034 and ISBN 0385476035.