Monday, August 29, 2005

Love

The concepts of teamwork and teams get stale pretty quickly, if for no
other reason than we overuse them as a panacea for seemingly every issue
that pops up.  Yet working together does make life easier. Here is
another
take on how to work with others - complete with movie references…

So what do you do if you don’t like your teammates? How about the person
who sits next to you? Your boss? Your client? (Imagine that!) Yourself?

In the Age of Aquarius, otherwise known as the late 60’s, when dealing
with
others, love was the answer - see the film “Hair” as reference. In the
80’s, you just didn’t care about anyone else - see the movie “Wall
Street”.
Then, people turned to self-help - see “Batman Begins”, and more
recently,
buddy sessions - see “Sideways”. You get the point…

Truth is you don’t have to love people to work with them. In fact, you
don’t even have to like them, but you do have to share some common
purpose.
Read on.

“Love does not consist of gazing at each other,
but in looking together in the same direction.”
- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

And there you have it. I have never been on a team or been part of a
group
where everyone got along. Hell, outside of “Candide”, every
relationship,
no matter how intimate and deep, has its ups and downs. In fact, a great
song lyric has become the philosophy of my family life (thank you
Debbie!)
- “The loving is easy. It’s the living that’s hard”.

It all adds up to this - teams are not about holding hands, or gazing
into
each others eyes; teams are not about magic connections (although it
does
occasionally happen) and teams are not about friendship and beers after
work.

What teams are - and good companies are teams - is a common vision and
the
hard work it takes to get there. Having said all that, I do believe that
in
business, common purpose leads to a level of camaraderie and yes, even
magic, that “eye gazing” never gets to.

Remember, the loving is easy. Let’s have a beer to work on the living…

Keep those quotes coming!

Posted by jim on 08/29 at 10:46 PM
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