Month: September 2014

Take a look in the patent registry of US, Japan or any country of the old economy. The world is full of solutions. A search on Google patents for Mousetrap, results in 54 000 (!) hits.

IBM has topped the list of granted patents in US each year between 1997 and 2012. All the years that was covered by the wikipedia page, so probably they top the list long before, and still do.

IBM’s business hasn’t exactly topped the IT companies those years, while Apple and Google are some of the most successful companies during the last 10 years or so. See the diagram how IBM, Apple and Google stocks compare for the last 10 years.

Have you heard it too? “There is no I in team!”.

Maybe you even stated this as an obvious and untouchable fact about [agile] teams, or while coaching an [agile] team. Of course not you, but others …

Here’s why I think there are good reasons to reconsider that statement as well as how teams are formed in our organisations.

Team work is when the individuals of the team co-operate to complete a task. They may perform poorly and even fail to accomplish the task, but it can still be teamwork.

In a successful team, generally, all the individuals of the team share the same vision and goals, and put in their best effort to cooperate to accomplish those goals.

In an TV-interview, the swedish national ice-hockey team coach, Per Mårts, was asked how he had succeeded in making this new generation players so successful ( winning the 2013 world championship). Part of his answer was:

… we have worked very hard to make “I” part of the team.  (swedish “jaget-i-laget”)

I think Mr. Mårts understands and practices something that the agile community in the large, has a lot to learn and benefit from.

Treat people as individuals but form the team from clear goals and common aspirations. The slogan, there is no I in team, has relevance only when the individual has no choice but to be part of the team. In Star trek such in-humanity is known as “Borg”.

How about changing the spelling into “tIIIIIm”?