Author: PO Bengtsson (Page 3 of 3)

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”?

The same day I posted on behaviours of innovative companies, swedish technology magazine NyTeknik published an article on Samsung and their strategy for innovation, titled “Samsung: To fail big is our secret”. The article is in swedish and is based on the interview with Injong Rhee, one of Samsungs Senior VPs for R&D of enterprise security solutions. Here’s some highlights from the article translated back to english.

“New ideas must be challenged, criticised to be able to create anything of value. But it is about focusing the critique on the ideas, not the persons.” sais Prof. Rhee.

In the interview he describes his view on how to create that environment where courage to fail with new ideas are created, by managing what he calls the engineering conflict and creating very early prototypes. Challenging ideas, not people is one key according to Prof. Rhee.

“We don’t do brainstorming-meetings. I don’t like those. Brain farts is not particularly useful. Ideas must be challenged. Define the goal and seek solutions. It takes real concentration to come up with new ideas.” sais Prof. Rhee