Management gurus are prone to turning simple ideas into panaceas, especially when they offer a way to control people more easily

Photo: Boston Public Library

Every so often, management fashion takes a perfectly reasonable activity — in this case, working as part of a team — and tries to turn it into an inviolable rule and a panacea for every ill.

As a natural-born contrarian, I find it interesting to look at received wisdom of this kind and ask myself how truly wise it is, so I’m curious why teamworking changed from being simply one way to organize things into something supposedly valuable in itself. Is it really because it produces outstanding benefits you could get no other way; or because ‘team players’ are more malleable and easily controlled by authority than people of a more independent character? Is team playing natural to our species, or something we’ve learned?

There’s nothing wrong with working in a team if that’s the best way to do things. What makes me wonder is the tendency for organizations to assume it’s the only way.

Is team working natural?

Nature gives us somewhat ambiguous clues. Amongst birds, there’s only a handful of species that live in a genuinely collaborative way. Plenty nest in colonies for protection, but relations between nesting pairs in these ‘bird cities’ are competitive and aggressive. They steal nesting materials from one another, attack any bird that strays too close to their nest, and even kill other birds’ chicks if they come within range. Not really team-players then. Very few collaborate, and then only between closely related individuals.

Amongst mammals, prey animals often live together, sometimes in great herds. It makes sense for protection from predators. But again, the degree of collaboration between individual animals varies widely. Some are genuinely colonial; others move together, yet live their own lives. The only fairly common factor is the presence of a hierarchy for mating and breeding: “alpha” animals get the best food and breed most, while the rest are banished to the edges of the herd (which sounds like many organizations I’ve known).

Predators can be either collaborative (like lions or wolves) or solitary (like tigers and bears). The ones that live in groups develop rigid hierarchies and their group life can be violent — a male lion ejecting a rival and taking over the pride will kill any cubs sired by his predecessor. The hierarchy in a wolf pack is continually reinforced by displays of aggression and submission (that too sounds like many, many organizations I’ve known). The solitary lives of tigers and bears may seem lonely to us, but I guess the bears and tigers don’t feel that way.

Primates seem mostly to live in groups, ranging from large troops — with all the competitive and violent trappings of hierarchies — to small family groups with a single adult male and several females and their offspring. Some, however, are solitary. The more social species display most of the less attractive facets of group life. Chimpanzees, one of our nearest relatives, conduct “wars” against neighboring groups, harming and killing any they can catch, and swiftly turn on their own members if the group feels so inclined.

In the natural world, it seems collaborative groups have benefits and drawbacks, as you would expect. Support and protection come with submission to a ‘pecking order’ and a degree of internal violence and competition. Life is good for the alpha males and alpha females. For the rest, it varies from waiting for the time to make your bid for the top spot to accepting a lifetime of subordination.

Is it rational?

Looked at rationally, I think the answer once again is “sometimes.” Teams can be excellent at certain activities (such as the implementation of agreed actions requiring large groups to carry them out), yet are usually rather poor at others (typically creativity and breakthrough innovation). I can’t think offhand of any great revolution in thought, science or the arts that wasn’t due to an individual — and many of these people too were treated as oddballs at the time. It may have taken groups to turn their ideas into something everyone can use, but the idea itself was nearly always produced by a single person, working more or less alone. Maybe the presence of too many people creates so many conflicting ideas and dissension that producing anything novel becomes too difficult?

The positive view of the ‘team-player’ doesn’t seem to apply at all in some areas of achievement. Who criticizes Beethoven because he didn’t join with Schubert and Schumann to compose ‘team symphonies’? Should Van Gogh have refused to paint without seeking consensus from others about the subject matter, the style and the colors? Even in the business world, entrepreneurs are rarely even close to being team-players; the most entrepreneurial and innovative being furthest away of all.

On the TV, in the movie theater, in product development, you can spot what has been created by a committee right away. It will be the product or program that’s least distinctive, least innovative and — above all — least risky. Nearly all revolutionary ideas come from individuals. It was rich individuals, not communities, who sponsored those who broke with the conventions. Only much later would some of those sponsored be recognized as geniuses. Today, most Western countries spend large amounts of money on public sponsorship of the arts. I don’t say this is wasted — it certainly helps many good artists stay afloat financially — but it never seems to produce anything that grabs the imagination and changes how we all see things thereafter.

Does it even matter?

Innovation, it seems, is an individual activity, just as implementation is more likely to be a group one. Each needs the other to succeed. If organizations and leaders favor only those who prefer to operate in a team or group, they will produce unbalanced structures, good at only some of the tasks needed for growth and survival.

Nobody condemns tigers and bears for being solitary; it’s their nature to be so. No one applauds wolves or hyenas simply because they live in cooperative, if rigidly hierarchical, groupings. That’s their nature. But let a human being be labeled a ‘lone wolf’ and there’s an immediate sense of rejection in many organizations. Isn’t that just as much that person’s nature as it is the tiger’s or the bear’s?

Wise organizations value people for what they’re good at. They don’t attempt to impose some ‘one size fits all’ straitjacket. Sociable people enjoy the company of those who share their inclination to bond together, but that shouldn’t mean lead them to condemn those who are happiest on their own. If there’s someone useful who works best alone, let them do so. If others flourish best in a group, let them form one. Why try to force ‘loners’ to fit into a group if you don’t compel group-oriented people to work on their own some of the time?

Life isn’t a matter of following fixed rules. What works for some people, in some circumstances, won’t work for others in different situations. Wouldn’t it be better to relax and let people follow their natures? It’s a foolish zoo-keeper who puts 12 tigers and 12 bears into the same enclosure and tells them to form a team. Let team-working abound where it makes sense. Just don’t try to force it down everyone’s throat.

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