CRA Inc

29 Sep 04 @ 5:05 pm

Some Ideas Are So Bad That Only Team Efforts Can Account for Them

The Wall Street Journal’s latest “Cubicle Culture” piece, Some Ideas Are So Bad That Only Team Efforts Can Account for Them (subscription required), takes a contrarian look at teamwork:

Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, says that teams represent an effort to pool diverse skills and knowledge, but they typically fail in three ways. First, people don’t recognize that the interesting and relevant information they possess is interesting and relevant, so they don’t share it. Second, people often overlook the fact that colleagues have opposing interests. (’Layoffs? They can’t come from my group.’) Third, people withhold information deliberately.

Teams often work better when they have at least some conflict, particularly if there is more than one dissenter, says Michael Useem, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. ‘A single devil’s advocate or whistleblower faces a really uphill struggle,’ he says. ‘But if you have one ally, that is enormously strengthening.’

posted in category(s): Points of Interest