Management fads tend to generate a sort of mass hysteria that can cause otherwise reasonable people to do remarkably stupid things. For the business community this is possibly nowhere more clear than with respect to the peculiar way it approaches the idea of teamwork.
The concept of teamwork has grown into a mini-universe of businesses that outline its putative theory and application, and offer a wide range of training devices at all levels for organizations of all kinds. Among the loopiest of these are off-site team-building organizers, who promote specific outings, from paint-ball expeditions to white-water rafting trips, for specific team-oriented purposes, from building trust to developing leadership.
Some of these involve the participants’ wearing of velcro suits. In some of these games, players negotiate obstacle courses and attempt to avoid becoming velcroed to the obstacles, presumably enhancing their agility and confidence. In others, they bounce off of trampolines and stick to walls and ceilings; it’s less clear what team-building function that develops.
Please see Jared Sandberg’s latest WSJ column for an excellent, concise depiction of how these activities are viewed by the participant/managers they are supposed to benefit. Even some of the promoters are forced to acknowledge how poorly received these outings are, and are left to insist that despite that, “all lot of bonding happens.” A lot of diminished regard for managers who organize these episodes also happens.
As mentioned in last Friday’s post, the use of teams is an obviously sensible idea for use in management – what are “corporations” after all, but the assemblage of people to corporately collaborate on a joint enterprise? Unfortunately, a lot of mania has come to surround the issue since its becoming a fixture on the palate of management fads. This, inevitably, is viewed by those subjected to it as evidence of, at best, poor management, and, at worst, cynically manipulative management.
Again: forget the fads; stick to the work at hand and let your organizational design and procedures evolve from that.
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