I have played hockey my whole life, so in retrospect i've been apart of roughly 16 teams. Some were successful and some were not. In my opinion the successful one's were the teams that wanted to be around each other even off the ice. When it came to practices and games we had a common goal, but further than that we simply liked each other as people and got along well.
As for the one boss structure, I am not quite sure of my stance. In some instances, I believe the saying "too many chiefs and not enough indians" implying that one chief would make tasks much more simple. On the other hand, I sometimes fear the idea of putting too much power on a sole individual. The teams of mine that had the most success were those that had a driven and motivated coach who at the same time respected and considered his players. In a work sense, a boss should want his/her organization to succeed, but should see the employees as talented individuals and not as just workers.
My example of my most successful teams resembles page 107 on high-performing teams. The book supports this idea by saying that the boss makes the employees aware of the teams' common goals, and allows the employees to carry out their actions in their own manner so long as the contribute what is necessary.
You first paragraph suggests a chicken and egg question - do successful teams make you want to hang around with your teammates or does wanting to hang around with your teammates make the team successful? Put a different way, if a new player that nobody on the team knew beforehand, but the player was quite skilled, would his addition make the team more successful or not?
ReplyDeleteThe issue of too many cooks spoiling the broth is a common organizational problem. Yet to reward good past performance many people are given some managerial responsibility when they get promoted. That may make the too many cooks problem inevitable.