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Team and Society

In The Manager’s View article we followed the manager’s thoughts on team formation. Now let’s take a more objective perspective.

The beginning. The society basic element is the family. We are born in families. We are programmed to form families (at least the women). Our society and our families urge us to get a family (at least the men). Our world is made of families.

The end. We strive to keep the families together because we are in constant search for:

  • security (as feeling);
  • security (as economic insurance) and…
  • security (as acceptance by the society).

In between the beginning and the end. We search for somebody with whom we feel secure, “complete us”, contributes to our everyday life and is programmed enough by the society to stay with us, whatever we decide (not) to do in the future. Ideally, we first find ourselves then we continue with the family life script. Alternatively, we might realize that it’s all about sophisticated fears carefully stratified over the time by the society, you decide that you do not need any of that and you start to design your own reality. Until we find our way to form the idea of tribe and family.

The analogy. What if we project the image of the personal life and the family to the business world? Then the society is replaced by the organization (the company) while the analogue of the family is… The Team!

The alternative story. Let’s tell the same story in a better way. At a moment of your life, you meet a person that you like. S/he has (does not have) similar skills, preferences and capabilities comparing to yours. Your points of view converge and you share the same vision. You do something together and despite the hard circumstances you are happy with the results. You feel like a Team.

The Real Team. Later on you meet another person that you like. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you strive to organize the world in a way so to do stuff together. You trust and respect each other. Then you realize that you already have a real team.

Your Team.  Do you believe you can meet such persons in the ten thousand people organization you work for? Do you believe your manager is able to unite people is such a way and build such a team for you?

The magician. Let’s suppose that you have found a person in your working organization with whom you are a team. Is your manager the magician who has built that team? No? You say managers are not magicians? Hm… You say it might be that sometimes manages contribute somehow… All right, let’s agree on the following: when a manager contributes to a team formation with a tiny little bit s/he deserves to be called magician. At least once… quietly.

The chicken and the egg. Choose five random examples of companies and find out what came first: the team or the company. Ask five persons which have really good teams acting in various domains what came first: the team or the corporate manager who built the team. The magic of the team spirit stands for centuries. What about this: on one hand only a hundred years ago there were no ten thousand people organization with managers, supervisors and coordinators; on the other hand people always have their preferences who to work with.

The conclusion. The team phenomenon is the predecessor of the larger organizations. The humble contribution of the organizational theories and business approaches is the theoretical description of the magic called team spirit.

The definition.  The real team is naturally formed. The naturally formed team is a group of people with common goals one of which is to keep the team together. The persons in the team recognize the common goal as their own, trust and respect each other.

They can be called an sustainable organizational unit . If the team is part of a larger organization, its development process is influenced by this organization. There is a special case where the bigger organization brought together some people and those people formed a team. Nowadays this is usual way of team building because big organizations ensure and organize most of the people’s work. But this case is not unique. There are other ways to build a team. Furthermore it happens an entire team to move from one organization to another. This means that the team operates inside the border of bigger organizations but also across the borders of organizations.

Now cross the borders of the shared concepts and think about the following: is it possible for a team to exist outside the borders of a big organization?

The Teams outside the borders of the Company!

Hereby our new horizons appear! Let’s explore together the Rise of The Team Spirit.

Team Spirit

Other Publications on Economy of Teams™: