Member-only story
Should you treat work like a virus and teams like the immune system?
What do it mean to treat work like a virus as teams like the immune system?
Essentially, that many organisations are misusing the concept of “a team as the basic unit of production” and, as a result, creating rigid structures that do not enable the successful flow of work. Instead, we need far more adaptable and changing work structures that meet the challenges that the work present to us.
During my talk I used 3 examples of poor team structures that I encounter time and time again in most business settings:
1️⃣ The case of people that are great individual contributors, but (for whatever reason) they are not a good fit inside a team. Many team approaches were created by extroverts for extroverts. In a neurodiverse context, many of the “rituals” we use in modern teams are torture for people. We need to use teams only when it is contextually appropriate.
2️⃣ The case of experts stuck on a team even if they do not really work with that team. Making those experts part of the team is often a waste of time and effort for that expert. It also hinders the rest of the team’s ability to truly become one. Instead of putting people inside teams just for the sake of it, it would be much more impactful to focus on enabling a coaching and mentoring approach that…
