How work teams work; “The Power Broker” at 50; Amazon drags workers back: Newsletter 18 September 2024
Newsletter 62: Thoughts on diversity and monoculture, seven terrible author habits, three people to follow, and three books to read.
What teams must share — and what they mustn’t
In more than 40 years of work, I’ve been part of some amazing teams. Looking back, what strikes me is how effective and functional almost all of those team were. In all of those cases I truly felt I was part of something worth doing.
One key when building teams is to consider what they should have in common — and what they should never have in common.
The fundamental constant in teams that work well is a shared vision of what they are trying to accomplish.
For example, teams I’ve worked on have had visions like these:
- Bring easy-to-use mathematical software to a broad audience.
- Make it easy for college teachers to teach and students to learn about software productivity tools.
- Reveal surprising, objective truths about how the media industry is evolving and help business decision-makers to set strategies based on those predictions.
- Launch a successful large-scale consumer survey business that reveals insights about changes in consumer attitudes about technology.
- Publish books to reveal analytical insights about the world and use those books to expose the value of the the place that incubated the authors.
- Increase the quality of internal writing at a company to make it more productive.
- Publish a book that will change people’s attitudes about the world.
There was plenty of disagreement on those teams. We disagreed about product features, how to position and market products, whether products were of sufficient quality to release, what to include, what to leave out, how much to charge, and countless other issues. And we often had extreme disagreements on how to accomplish our goals.
None of those visions were centered in the individuals leading the team. And none of them were about making money. They were about accomplishing something worth doing. This is what kept the teams pulling together, even when we disagreed. And it is what enabled us to have productive arguments, because logic prevailed: if you could convince people that your strategy was better, they’d listen.
But it’s also worth considering what these teams didn’t have in common.
They included people with diverse skills: founders, engineers, writers, quality assurance people, marketers, and admins. A team full of ten software engineers is going to have blind spots; a team with two engineers, a writer, a Q.A. person, and a marketer will see things the engineers would miss.
They included men and women. It has been my experience that most single-gender teams have blind spots. My experience with women professionals has been that they reveal perspectives that I as a man might have missed, and often find ways to motivate collaboration that I would never have thought of. Men, too, have insights that a team of women may overlook.
They weren’t all heterosexuals. In some cases, members of the team who were gay suggested insights about gay customers that were eventually proven out.
They were diverse in age and experience. A team full of old, experienced people is likely to have gaps in its thinking about younger customers and new ways of working. And a team with nothing but young people will make mistakes that the older people might have noticed and pointed out. Age-diverse teams sometime don’t see eye-to-eye on everything, but when they work together, they can reach new levels of effectiveness. The also tend to learn from each other — the young people teach the older people just as much as the reverse.
You’re probably expecting me to speak about racial diversity here, and certainly, people of different races and ethnicities also offer a variety of perspectives. So do people of different educational backgrounds — those who grew up in poor or working class families as well as those from middle- and well-heeled families. You might learn something from working with people who don’t vote the way you do, too.
I’ve also worked with people from nations all over the world. There is no better way to explode your preconceptions and expand your ideas than to interact with someone from Iran, China, Spain, or Brazil. Americans often fail to recognize that the rest of the world doesn’t operate the way they do.
People see diversity as important to create more equal opportunities. But diversity of all kinds is necessary to take the blinders off and understand the wide variety of perspectives, methods, attitudes, audiences, and forms of communication that get you closer to your shared goal.
A diverse set of goals is a disaster when it comes to working together. But a diverse set of workers will get you to that goal faster.
What was your “aha moment” when working with people unlike you in a team?
News for writers and others who think
On Jane Friedman‘s blog Joni B. Cole Cole explains seven ways that authors sabotage themselves.
Robert Caro wrote The Power Broker, a book about real estate mogul Robert Moses, 50 years ago (gift link). Now there’s an exhibit about how he wrote it and finally, a digital edition. How many books you’re reading now will be worthy of a 50-year retrospective?
Amazon’s CEO wants everyone back to the office five days a week. Will this mean that authors get better customer service? I’m guessing no.
You think you’re having a bad day? This woman bought land in Hawaii — and then a builder built a house for somebody else on her lot. And then sued her.
Three people to follow
Ted Fleming , founder of groundbreaking non-alcoholic beer company Partake. (If you think non-alcoholic beer is for losers, you’ve missed out on a massively flavorful movement.)
Kate Delhagen , founder of Oregon Sports Angels and all-around brilliant thinker at the intersection of women, sports, and business.
Brian Krebs , straight-talker on the crooked world of cybersecurity.
Three books to read
Say It Well: Find Your Voice, Speak Your Mind, Inspire Any Audience by Terry Szuplat (Harper Business, 2024). Barack Obama’s speechwriter reveals pubic speaking secrets.
Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game by Steve Fuller (Anthem 2018). What does it mean to be true now, and who decides?
Watch and Learn: How I Turned Hollywood Upside Down with Netflix, Redbox, and Moviepass: Lessons in Disruption by Mitch Lowe (Hachette Go, 2022). What really happened at the birth of the video industry, Netflix, Redbox, and Moviepass — the unhinged memoirs of a gonzo video entrepreneur.