It’s Teamwork. Rescue Me, Quotation.
My twitter stream delivered a thought-provoking quotation about quotations once. This one, and the tweet came from Bob Marshall:
A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.
Quotations indeed take a fairly large part among tweets and other social web shares. When something troubles us at work, whether we are looking for a solution to a technical or to an organizational problem, and if talking it out with friends and colleagues is not enough, or we are shy and/or unwilling to speak, we find outlet in sharing quotes by reputable gurus, and those quotes reflect how and what we think about this problem.
I only in part agree with the quote by A. Milne above. The habit of using quotations might be perceived as lazy thinking, sometimes. However, I don’t think that people who share quotes and links are to be labelled as “the lazy ones”. On the contrary, I’d say, they are the ones who do think. It’s just that for the time being they might shy away from stepping forward with their opinion, expressed in their own words. It might be even scary for some, to stand out and say: “Yes, these are my thoughts, and my words, and I’m ready to be accountable for them”. We are all human, and we all have things that we are not yet ready to let out to the outer world. Out of fear, or out of passive-aggressive reactions, or … <insert your reason here>. Or, we might be too lazy to care about building formal logical discourses so as to pass on the message to those who do not share our thinking right away. Some people seem to resonate naturally with each other, and with some people a heavily geared-up persuasive rhetoric has to be used. Take a moment and think: which people in your social circles throw links or tweet quotes instead of writing or speaking up? Likely, they are just not yet ready to make this leap, the shift from the safe protection of quotes and references to the scary uncertainty of how the world and the humans in this world would react to what would then officially be treated as the writer’s/speaker’s own opinion. Absolutely, they need to be encouraged to speak out and to write up.
The scary uncertainty used to get hold of me a lot, back in the day, and I remember particularly well how “do-or-die-ishly” it felt when I plunged ahead and published the first version of my article on self-organization. The article came across— and maybe it still does — as contrarian to the mainstream thinking. I expressed my own opinion, backed up by intuition and personal experience, and didn’t pay much attention to references, details, and credibility proofs. If I did, it would take a book, not just one article. Anyway.
There’s another controversial subject that probably has many heads thinking of it. I want to bring the subject forth, but this time I’d take a safe protection from George Lois, an advertising guru, who wrote the book called “Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!)”. Software development is a creative pursuit, at least, when it comes to the ideas part, so I was delighted to see that a recognized creativity guru thinks about teamwork along the same lines that I do. The subject of groupthink, and the dynamics of software development teams working effectively together has preoccupied me for quite some time, but I will hold back my thoughts for now, letting George Lois speak instead:
Teamwork might work in building an Amish barn, but it can’t create a Big Idea.
The accepted system for the creation of innovative thinking in a democratic environment is to work cooperatively in a teamlike ambience. Don’t believe it. Whatever the creative industry, when you’re confronted with the challenge of coming up with a Big Idea, always work with the most talented innovative mind available. Hopefully.. that’s you.
Wait, wait. Before you throw rotten tomatoes, George Louis does give credit to teamwork, and I do, too. Here’s what goes next in the book:
Once you’ve got the Big Idea, that’s where teamwork comes in — selling the Big Idea, producing the Big Idea, and bringing the Big Idea into fruition.
With due respect, here’s how the Amish barn construction site looks. George Lois has this image right in the book.
P.S. Keep in mind that this article has primarily been intended as a thought-provoker :)
Related:
(tech) Leaders, Managers, and Tennis Umpires
Why Self-Organization Is a Luxury
Dissecting Dysfunctional Meetings
The Link: Organizational Culture and Development Process
This story is based on one of my earlier articles.
