6 ways Teams Fail
Most organizational failures aren’t caused by one big mistake. They happen when small, 'harmless' imperfections align like slices of Swiss Cheese*.
Here are six problems that happen in human groups that almost everybody will be familiar with - but few people know what to do with.
Selfishness. This is universal and inevitable. Ants and bees are unselfish and social. That’s fine. Golden eagles are selfish and unsocial. That’s fine. We are both selfish and social, and this places tension on every individual and group relationship. The problem is that organisations become less effective as they are consumed by rivalries and factions.
Lack of direction. David Graeber coined the term “bullshit jobs”, and said 50% of us are stuck in them. The Pareto Principle says that 80% of the work is done with 20% of the effort. Some groups don’t seem to have a clear direction, and some jobs don’t seem to have a clear purpose. When organisations lack organisation and efficiency, the problem is that individuals lose their sense of responsibility and authority. Poor results follow.
Firefighting and crisis management - is fine, when there is a crisis. This is part of high performance under pressure. But when the crisis is the consequence of a failure to focus on what really matters, this is a problem.
Grievances. Part of the challenge of running a group is that people are much more aware of their own hard work and their own needs than they are aware of those of others. This means that when authority, opportunities, rewards, recognition and blame get shared out, it’s easy for people to perceive that they have not been treated fairly. On the other hand (see selfishness above) unfairness is endemic in organisations that do not actively work against it. Perceived or actual, a lack of fairness in a group is a problem.
Burnout. Work can contain elements that are hard or unpleasant. That’s partly why we get paid to do it. And because life is not perfectly ordered, in organisations, some people, at some times, will have more work and responsibility than others. In effective groups, individuals have the awareness and desire to share effort. Organisations where people don’t care about others have a problem.
Inertia. In times of challenge, winning organisations are fast and agile, with motivated, creative and effective employees. As Daniel Pink explains in his book Drive, when people are driven when they experience autonomy, mastery and purpose. This lies on a foundation of individual freedom. When, for a variety of reasons, bosses can’t give their employees freedom, this is a problem for the organisation.
Part of problem management is recognition. Another part of context, or knowing what caused the problem. Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory states that all societies hold six basic values; care, freedom, fairness, order, loyalty, and sanctity. For us selfish-social humans, morals are not a nice to have, they are the principles by which we balance this contradiction in our natures. Organisations that don’t share values have a problem.
This is not to say that people and organisations that have problems don’t have values. On the contrary, much misalignment is caused by arguments over values. It’s not even that people don’t share values - almost nobody would dispute that care, freedom, fairness, order, loyalty and sanctity are all good things.
But almost everybody will argue about how we express each one of these, how to prioritise them, and how to balance values that are sometimes contradictory, such as loyalty and fairness, and freedom and order.
We can even map specific values to specific problems.
When organisations don’t care, they suffer burnout.
When they are corrupt or unfair, there are grievances.
When they lack authority and order, there is drift.
Lack of sanctity or purity creates a risk of short termism and firefighting.
Lack of loyalty causes selfishness and factions.
And egotistical leaders undermine freedom, which harms innovation and competitiveness.
The phrase ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ isn’t totally accurate. The real truth is that if you want a strategy you have to have a culture, and if your culture isn’t rooted in values that are collectively prioritised and expressed, you have a problem.
Which of these 'Swiss Cheese' holes do you see as the biggest risk in organisations generally?