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The inherent flaw of teamwork is that responsibility is actually atomic. As soon as you assign the same responsibility to a group of two or more persons, things
by Hermel 12y ago
The inherent flaw of teamwork is that responsibility is actually atomic. As soon as you assign the same responsibility to a group of two or more persons, things will start to go wrong sooner or later. If you look more closely at successful teams of the past, you will notice that they succeeded because they actually worked as a well-coordinated group of individuals, with a clear separation of responsibilities. Ringo Starr never played the guitar, and John Lennon kept his hands from the drums. If a team is unable to assign responsibilities to its individual members, you don't get a team, you get a committee. And it is no accident that "design by committee" has a negative connotation. What you get out of a committee is not the greatest idea a single member had. What you get out of a committee is the lowest common denominator. And if that denominator happens to be low enough, you won't get any usable results at all.
- Terr_ 12y ago> a clear separation of responsibilities Tacking on: I'm sure everyone has an opinion on "power without responsibility" but the reverse--responsibility without power--is also damaging. Sometimes dysfunction is caused by giving different people different responsibilities, and giving them only "negative" power to veto or reject, or no real power at all. This is bad for several reasons. First, it sabotages motivation/fulfillment because people can't feel truly invested in creating and owning the work. Second, it puts the people involved into a "reject everything, cover my ass" mode, since that is their only way for their role to "add value". Lastly, people can (sometimes quite reasonably) conclude they are being kept around as emergency scapegoats for mistakes that aren't actually their own, which hurts morale and cooperation.
- xorcist 12y agoThe example would work just as well in reverse: Because Lennon could play the drums, they made great music. There is a risk in divided responsibilities: If you don't understand the other person's perspective or area of expertise, the group stops working as a coherent whole.
- ar_turnbull 12y agoDivided responsibilities among team members, but each individual with the ability to understand the other — which actually returns us to the "theory of mind" that the article refers to.