This isn't true even with a organized, disciplined team. What happens is the responsibilities of get divided out to other people on the team. Usually not the entire team, so some people are stuck with unacknowledged overhead.
For people who will take on these tasks, often them not being done is worse than them getting lumped with them. While others benefit from them being done, the primary benefit is to the person doing them (because the alternative is upsetting), even if this causes resentment (which it might not do!). Apart from the potential resentment, the main issue this can cause in a team is bad allocation of resources: if there's one person who takes on most of these tasks and they are also a high-performer in other areas, then the team is unlikely to be getting the most out of them because their time is taken up by tasks that anyone could do, but isn't.
Assembling the right team is important, but sharing the load is way more important, imho. I've been on teams where one person does the bulk of the work and the others take credit. If you can track what is being done and by whom, you'll be more successful.
Another problem is the expectations it puts on others in a team. Is it ok if there are people working 40+ hours and people working constantly 60+ hours in the same team? I guess this can lead to serious tensions.
You can still have a separate team for it, to monitor and/or guide the processes in the other teams. But that team should not have the sole responsibility for execution, because you end up rationing the concern you claim to care about.
I don't know why but this idea really seems to rub some people up the wrong way. Yet we all know that on a big team only a handful of people will be doing the majority of the work.
I think one point is that it's not always about maximizing efficiency. Being on a team really requires some communication that isn't strictly about completing a task.
Then if the team works hard (say, they're superhuman and can work 24 hours a day 7 days a week straight) and do what other teams do in 3 months in one, will they get the other two off?
Also, on teamwork it seems to be the case, often, that the competent people do all the work, and are expected to share credit, but will take all the blame if they get something wrong. At least, that’s how it works in corporate. It’s exhausting. As a so-called “lone wolf”, you get to finish early and go home.
Sounds like a situation I've found myself in before. The majority of the work is done, and it's become more work to organize and maintain a team than to simply do it on your own.
I mean, this varies team by team and company by company. To spit an anecdote into the bucket, I asked some teammates to help me take care of a problem, and they did - and I don't think I hold a particularly large cache of informal power.
And how do you resolve this contradiction? Teach your employees that if you don’t want to be interrupted you better write good documentation. And have one dedicated team member each day responsible for supporting other teams. I think both of those are mentioned in the article, but it was a little a while since I read it.
Not to forget that you might have multiple part-timers on your team who are doing different work hours. The shared work time dimishes which makes it more difficult to hand over tasks etc.
reply