The New Why Teams Don't Work by Harvey Robbins

Author:Harvey Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2011-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

130

chapter 15

Competitive Hazards

Several years ago, Harvey was working in a small division of a much larger company that had morale problems and couldn’t quite figure out what was going wrong. After poking around, he discovered that the general manager of the division gained sadistic pleasure from watching his teams compete and scramble with each other for limited resources and few rewards.

While interviewing team resource folks, Harvey also discovered that resources weren’t nearly as scarce as had been broadcast by the GM. This gentleman simply thought “putting the squeeze on” would heighten the level of team competition. He was right. The resulting friction between teams eventually raised the temperature within teams to the point of team meltdown. The resulting toll on division morale was evident to everyone—except you-know-who.

What we say about this may violate your deeply held principles, but hear us out:

There is no such thing as friendly competition.

Competition, the way people usually mean the word, is essentially a win/lose proposition. The competitor who wins gets the gravy today, and the competitor who loses is going to try to get even tomorrow.

131 Teaming, by definition, looks to competition’s opposite—collaboration. Collaboration assumes that all sides can win; not on every point of every agenda, but enough of a win on the important points, so that staying together as a team remains mutually reinforcing and profitable to all.

Why does competition hurt?

Well, it doesn’t always hurt. Healthy competition is an important part of the brute survival instinct. There are times when resources are genuinely scarce, when you must beat out someone else to get your share in order to live. In war, the enemy must die for you to live.

The problem is that Social Darwinist managers are awfully quick to equate the workplace with brute survival and war. They pump up the troops with frightening exhortations to devour the next guy, or be devoured by him.

Some leaders line their office spaces with posters and taxidermy of predatory creatures, to encourage team members to see themselves as eagles, cheetahs, and barracudas. Such displays are considered motivational. In reality, all they achieve is convincing teams that they are working for someone too obtuse to try real motivation—informing people of business conditions, and explaining what they need to do to succeed under those conditions.

The problem with unhealthy, over-the-top competition is that it creates such a toxic trust-deficient atmosphere that teams cannot relax and work together.

Competitors are invariably opponents, withholding information from one another. Collaborators, by contrast, are practically family. They share rather than hoard, relying on one another’s experience and expertise to support team outcomes and advance individual goals.

Team members collaborate among themselves to succeed, and they continue to collaborate with other teams, linking arms to achieve the outcomes of the enterprise.

Pitting teams against one another (“Team Red,” “Team Blue,” etc.), with rewards and recognition going to the team that leaves the others behind, is just that—the pits.

132 Bottom-line thinking alone should tell you that interteam competition is a bad idea. It promotes results exactly opposite to what teams are capable of achieving.

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