Why a team?

Instinctively two very opposite emotions pop up when I think about teams. On the one hand it makes me think of a club of friends, a home, fellowship, companionship, a team that knows how to get challenging jobs done. On the other hand it raises feelings like irritation, powerlessness, bother and frustration. How come a team can be both heaven on earth as well as a true hell?

During the 80ies and 90ies the topic ‘teamwork’ became one of the hot topics. We all swore by the huge advantages of teamwork. The slogan was: 1+1=3. The word synergy knew its glory days (somewhat comparable with the big words of today, like ‘tribes’ and ‘autonomous teams’).

Around 2000 followed the first alarming field-reports. The universities of Utrecht and Heidelberg published some of the first empirical studies on the result of implementing the teamwork-principle. 10 years after implementation the typical result was that most team-members were less productive, less innovative and more frequently ill than professionals that work by themselves (the reports also indicated that there were few exceptions that actually showed excellent positive results).

I can hear the team-fanatics already exclaiming: ‘yes-but’! Naturally, a team can definitely become more productive, innovative and healthy. However, people do not get to be just that, just because they become a team-member. Starting a team quite often motivates the team-members, but keeping the team on a productive, and healthy level is a different story. It needs a lot of effort, and is an art itself! During the next blogs we will be going deeper into this topic...