Being on a high functioning team is just the best thing ever. Like how I imagine a championship winning sportsball team must feel.
My two recurring problems have been:
- The need to play catch with others who can not or will not throw the ball back.
This has taken every form. Too junior, too senior, gatekeeper, saboteur, communications barrier, maverick, Mr (or Mrs) Magoo, ad nauseum.
- Not having any one to "rubber duck" with.
I'll eventually figure out most things on my own. But it's oh so much nicer to have a buddy.
--
Alas, miscommunication and cross purposes is the default.
Getting to Just Right (Goldilocks) is rare, has always required huge effort, and is short-lived (often mooting the effort). (Cite: "forming, storming, norming, performing," where the chaotic PHBs trigger another reorg, like cosmic rays randomizing memory bits.)
And that's life. Work, marriage, parents, kids, teachers, volunteering, riding the bus, and so forth.
Playing team sorts I found to be a great way to take a different cross-section of life and develop semi-stable relationships over a long period of time. My adult baseball team had me, a doctor, a DJ, an auto body tech, a couple factory workers, a landscaper, a gym manager, a teacher, a cop, and a few other people who came in and out. I loved playing, but I also liked the different worlds intersecting aspect.
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.
A single team is really helpful. Where I’ve seen it get particularly unhelpful is with multiple teams. I’m also not opposed to the concept, I just think it requires work to do correctly.
I've worked on teams historically that did pairing (even pairing all day), and mobbing all day, and I don't get the hate.
If the main issue is burnout, then what's up? Even working solo you can burn out, so I don't think that's a valid argument unless someone can convince me that specifically pairing is causing the burn out.
The biggest thing is you need a team that can trust and support each other.
Of course, but is fulfilling your social needs a requirement for being a good teammate? And does the team have any responsibility to me to allow me to work in a comfortable environment (from home)?
I personally don't dislike people but prefer small teams where we almost get to read each other's mind. There's no magic formula for that, it's just compatibility and it usually forms organically. But I also like to get some 'let me think alone' time without which my performance starts slipping..
There are lots of reasons to prefer friendly teams.
* Just, generally more enjoyable and productive experience. Most things are really not that important, particularly in school (which is where this experiment was run). And anyway, the purpose is often not to be optimally productive, but to learn something. If you are in a class where you are just clinging to some rockstar and getting A's that way, you don't have to learn anything.
* Lots of technical decisions are really not very important. Your first solution will probably not be great anyway. It is preferable to get the group to agree on something and move forward. This can be done by having some very competent, less nice person ram their solution through, but a nice, semi-competent group with a good dynamic can also agree on a bad solution, mess it up, and iterate until it works.
* Most people are really not that competent as far as I can tell. I mean, I've met people who can carry a team individually, but they are very rare, not common enough to plan on. People with more ego than talent are more common I think, and they have a net negative value in many cases. A friendly, incompetent person is at worst a minor distraction.
Thank you for this opinion! I completely hear you on forced-socialization ideas. I also understand that there is a place for work and a place for fun. However, I am curious on what you have tried or seen on top performing teams around building camaraderie and coming together - especially when remote.
I enjoy working with my team as well but I think there’s a happy medium to be struck. It’s not a binary of :: have your attention constantly pulled or being hidden away and unavailable for collaboration.
I personally think everyone should have a team to give them help and guidance, and members of that team should have their own teams. I think this is a good idea in theory - will be hard to do in practice though.
Indeed. I've been the happiest when I've felt a part of an obvious team, and the unhappiest when it was just individuals working on their todo lists. In a really large organization a team can be project-based. I'm not very sociable, but I definitely gain energy from "sharing a foxhole" with team mates, and looking back on something and saying "we did that."
I don't care about my todo list type projects other than to do a good job and keep my job.
I'm fine working solo, paired, group, whatever.
Being on a high functioning team is just the best thing ever. Like how I imagine a championship winning sportsball team must feel.
My two recurring problems have been:
- The need to play catch with others who can not or will not throw the ball back.
This has taken every form. Too junior, too senior, gatekeeper, saboteur, communications barrier, maverick, Mr (or Mrs) Magoo, ad nauseum.
- Not having any one to "rubber duck" with.
I'll eventually figure out most things on my own. But it's oh so much nicer to have a buddy.
--
Alas, miscommunication and cross purposes is the default.
Getting to Just Right (Goldilocks) is rare, has always required huge effort, and is short-lived (often mooting the effort). (Cite: "forming, storming, norming, performing," where the chaotic PHBs trigger another reorg, like cosmic rays randomizing memory bits.)
And that's life. Work, marriage, parents, kids, teachers, volunteering, riding the bus, and so forth.
reply