I wanted to contribute to the thread on teams by saying that I am a deep
skeptic of the effectiveness of teams. Teams are too formal, structured
and slow for today's unorganized world. The whole idea of spending half a
day just to orientate myself to a team is nice and social but a waste of
time. I would never deliberately build a team- let it emerge maybe through
an informal alliance of interests inside and outside of the organization.
These may be your "virtual teams".
The problems with teams are the transaction costs incurred just to get in
a position to get something done, before you actually do anything. Too
much busyness and not enough business. These are the costs of negotiation
and compromise. You may like to weigh these costs against the benefits
from teams of muliple ideas and insights, but in the unorganized world,
the most important thing is to be first. The right decision at the wrong
time is the wrong decision. The right decision two weeks late means that
you have missed the opportunity. As such, decision making systems such as
the "ringi" system from Japan in which people collectively agree on a
decision and every team member gets a say are a waste of time and simply
too slow. The time frame in which decision and action responses are needed
is getting ever shorter. "God is speed and time is the devil".
In fact, if you look throughout what I call "The Hierarchy of
Collectivism" the simple hard clear truth is that all collectivist
structures from communism through socialism through trade unions through
organizations through teams through marriages are hemmorhaging. The
reasons are the same: transaction costs, the need for speed and the
increased diversity of opinions and difficulty in getting agreement. What
is left is the individual acting out multiple team roles and getting
things done- sometimes untidely and sometimes wrongly, but always quickly.
This is not a sad lonely place. On the contrary, its just that traditional
organized collectivist structures are too static these days. Dynamic
configurations are in ascendency: sponetaneous, impermanent connections...
As the advertising guru David Oglivy said "Look in all of the parks in
your cities at all of the statues. You will find no statues of
committees"- even if they move about as quickly as statues in practice!
Rgds sincerely simon buckingham, www.unorg.com, buck@dial.pipex.com
unorganization: business not busyness!
--Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>