Ugly Team Wins
The 2019 Green Bay Packers last year have had so many ugly wins the past season. Throughout their games, the offense has just scored enough to put points on the board and just prevented the ball from getting to the other team. Meanwhile, the Packers defense lead the team to most of their wins by just keeping them in games. I think ugly wins like these are the norm in any field of work because no talent from one person can lead to consistent success, and being in an all-star team is very rare.
Talent from one person can lead to some success but eventually, I think overreliance on that one person will break the person and lead the team to several losses. I have seen that in some project groups in school, where there is just one person in the group from an honor’s course chasing Latin Honors. Frequently, this one person chasing the honor roll is the only one who actually cares about getting an A in the project. As for the others, they would frequently just contribute at the last second just for the purpose of showing they put in effort without giving much quality work. And so, the result of the project ends to be just based on the talent of the star member probably with a decent grade at least but also with one person being burned out, frustrated, and tired beyond belief. Thinking about my internship and how things will be when I’m already working in June or July, I don’t think this way of working will work at all. Hopefully, in the workplace, everyone is trying to prove their worth in order to get a higher salary and get the lifestyle that they yearn for. However, I fear that the posts about hating work are so real to the point that teamwork will just be one person carrying a group of people trying to get by. Here, I think things will get much worse for the person used to carrying teams because the workload will be much heavier, and the regular burnout will probably eventually take a toll. Relying on just mainly one person to carry the team may work in the beginning when the person is fresh but then the team would be playing with an asset that will eventually expire.
Because of this, I think it is the dream of people who have always worked hard with their talent to get into a team of people just like them but this is all probably just a dream. In school, when people from the same honor’s course can be friends and be groupmates with each other, this is still realistic. People start college and figure out who are the other hardworking people who are chasing for honors. Throughout their stay in college, students form bonds with each other, getting each other as groupmates off good working experiences. Frequently also, when a groupmate really wants a free-loader gone, there’s always the professor to tell to get rid of the dead weight. But at work, I just don’t see many opportunities for people to just keep on working with the same talented hard-working people. In work, people don’t have control over whom they want to work with, just the company they can for that hopefully has mostly quality employees. Even in these companies, I’m not sure if bonds can be taken advantage of to stay in good groups because the boss calls the shots and assignments. Even getting rid of a groupmate is probably not an option because free-loaders will stay long in the company especially when management does not see the issue in such a big company. It may be amazing for people to work in groups just made of members who have so much talent and effort, but people like these are rare so groups of these members are rarer.
So then I think, it is more realistic to have a string of ugly wins with groupmates with differing levels of talent and work ethic, and different working personalities. In school, I clearly see this in groups where the courses are different and the students’ backgrounds differ. People from different courses will have different competencies in terms of the theory to be used. People will also have different hobbies which will affect the creative output if there is one. Also, people will be from different high schools that have different cultures which can determine if team chemistry will be there. In work, I think there will be parallel to this with people coming from different courses and backgrounds. Employees will have different kinds of theories mastered as they may come from different courses back in college. Also, their interests may be different leading to different skills from indulging those interests. And finally, I think at first, being from different colleges will also be a factor although I just hope adjustment to the company culture happens quickly. So with different backgrounds and competencies, I think teams would have to hit the ground running, and figure out how to work with each other in a cohesive dynamic.
Ugly wins will probably be the norm because winning consistently depends on an imperfect team depending on each other. Teams can depend on just one person but eventually, this one person will burn out and cease to be effective. People can hope to be on dream teams but that’s probably just a dream because good workers are surely harder to come by. And so winning regularly will probably come from regular teams with different personalities and skills that everyone has to work with. Then when feeling dreadful in team initiatives, I think it’s best to keep this in mind, try one’s best to make the most of everything, and know that team effort leads to team success.