The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 11 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People.

Forget about teamwork:

Give me teams that work

Some managers seem to think that one way to survive the corporate world is to keep one’s head down. They figure that they can do this by ensuring that all of their direct reports (and those within their matrix management structure) work well together to avoid complaints and arguments. To such managers, it is important to suppress problems and to keep all conflicts out of public view. I once attended a meeting where one such manager called all his senior managers to a three-day off-site conference for the purpose of setting the ground rules about how he wanted to operate as the new group manager.

The meeting opened with the group manager’s announcement that he wanted all his managers to work together as a ‘highly effective self-led team’. He thought that this would make us feel important. He supposed that we would feel happy about directing our own destiny. In his own awkward way, he was silently pleading with us to get along famously and co-operate so that we did not make a fuss that might embarrass him with headquarters.

The group manager announced his desire to build us into a highly effective self-led team and proceeded to quiz us about what this might mean. Holding a workbook in hand, and following one of the exercises step-by-step, he asked us to outline what we thought were the essential qualities of a self-led team. No-one was brave enough to break the ice, so I put my hand up as a gesture of co-operation to get the ball rolling and to save him from panic. ‘What do you think, Jonar?’ he asked. ‘Fun,’ I said. With that, he felt relieved and happily approached the white-board to scribe this three-letter word.

Now that the ice was broken, others needed to make their mark. One chap shouted, ‘Integrity’, another ‘Co-operation’. As if a dictionary had been opened, one by one words were bandied about while the scribe filled the white-board with fancy expressions. Soon the list began to look impossible. How could any team possess so many noble qualities? The list included honesty, trust, support, honour, vision, compromise, patience, and others I did not understand. After ten minutes of furious co-operation, the word-count began to slow down. At that point, I raised my hand for the second time. Now I was ready for my real contribution. ‘Jonar, what do you think?’ said the scribe. ‘A strong leader!’ I exclaimed. The group manager quickly realised that this would bring the whole edifice tumbling down. He stopped writing and shouted, ‘No! A self-led team does not need a leader. It relies on teamwork.’

Those who were looking forward to this new era of freedom nodded and agreed with him. They were intimidating in their rejection. ‘A strong leader defeats the whole exercise’, said one manager. ‘If we work well together, we do not need a leader’, shouted another.

My goodness, what a nerve that hit. The most striking thing about this exercise was the fact that by 4:00 pm on the third day, the group had not agreed on a single initiative. They had spent three days chatting and arguing about the split of budgets, who ought to have sign-off authority for the different countries’ budgets, and who ought to be the sacrificial lamb and agree to a higher target to appease headquarters’ demands that we increase our revenue.

I looked at my watch and realised that we had one hour to wrap this up. In defiance, in disgust, and in amazement, I put my hand up, waited for everyone to cease the chatter, and said in a zombie monotone voice, ‘I think we need a strong leader.’

Teamwork is useless

Teamwork does not work in organisations that set targets for individuals or divisions. It is useless to expect teamwork to work when individual goals are vital for individual survival.

Furthermore, teamwork is useless in organisations that depend on rank because rank brings with it some privileges. Why should anyone work to assist another when the rewards and privileges will not be shared equally?

I am not advocating the abolition of rank. Rank is vital. Nor am I suggesting that teamwork is not powerful. I am saying do not expect teamwork to work in the context of an organisation that sets individual targets and individual rewards. (See Chapter 15, ‘Fluid shares’.)

Do not confuse workers by setting strange goals. If they are given a job to do, they focus on that job, especially if their salary depends on certain targets being met. This means that they have no incentive to co-operate within a team environment.

Many chief executive officers (CEOs) realise that teamwork does not work when there is a choice — meaning that workers will choose to focus on the things that matter most to them — their salary, their rank, or their hidden agenda. As a result, CEOs look to ways of forcing individuals and divisions to work together. They make them interdependent, forcing them to co-operate. This is a perverse way of trying to engender teamwork.

You don’t need teamwork — you need teams that work

The stupidest element of teamwork is the way in which it is espoused amid contradiction and hypocrisy. For a start, sporting analogies must not be used to express organisational desires. There is a great difference between a sporting and governmental or commercial organisation. Also, the structure of a sporting team is vastly different from the structure of a division.

Even in the sporting arena there are crazy behaviours that make a mockery of the principles of teamwork — such as the variance in salaries, and the special recognition given to the ‘player of the match’. How can such recognition be reconciled with the theory of teamwork? A sports group comprises skilled individuals who combine their talent and energy to strive for a common goal. Yet, the rewards are not shared equally.

In the computer industry, it has been said that if cars had developed at the same pace as computers, today a Ferrari would cost $5.50, drive five million kilometres on one litre of petrol, and park comfortably on the head of a pin. In organisational terms, sporting analogies are farcical because if they are to mean anything on the corporate or organisational front, sport would have had to endure the same changes and challenges that a typical business has had to cope with. This would translate into a typical baseball team having to function without a coach, halve the number of players, play twice as many games per season, with each game lasting double the original duration. Many more meetings would be required mid-game, as well as the introduction of robots or some mechanisation to replace players.