Team Work, a farce?

Team work works! Or does it?

Many of us have been taught in many of our professional training courses the importance of team work behind the success of a project. How team work helps us out of a difficult situation which, otherwise would have been a failure. But the question here is what team work is? Does it work? Rather, when does it work?

A team is nothing but a group of individuals working towards a similar or single goal and they are working towards it because, consciously or unconsciously they know that achieving the team’s goals would help them achieve their goals, say a H1B visa or a role change or a better increment etc.

Now say that we all are playing a game, a game where the primary goal is defined, say a role change. And every one in the team is playing for that. To achieve this goal, we need to do certain things which help others in achieving their goals and since their goals are fulfilled we achieve our’s.

Each of the team members has his /her own strategy, some does good work, others ‘show case’ things to their managers and a few others exploit human weaknesses but each one has his/her own dominant strategy, the strategy might help the wider cause, that is the team’s goal or it might just deceive the whole team that by just pretending that it serving the wider cause.

This is what happens, rather what has been happening in the society since time immemorial and this idea, of farcing the team that you are serving the purpose of the team and hence you should be rewarded by helping you achieve your goal, is good or bad is always a dilemma.

Now let’s say, that we need to play this game say for n times with the same set of players. What happens now is that the mutual knowledge of each other’s strategies exists, previously there was always an element of uncertainty in the mind of at least one player on another because of lack of common knowledge, but now since each is almost cognizant about other’s strategy and this is the point where team work ceases to exist.

The reason for this is that in human society, the concept of rational co-operation exists only if you know less. If the ignorance or uncertainty ceases, the rational co-operation collapses too.

Now, say there exists a team where the individuals are rewarded and the reason behind the rewards does not exist, or a team where there exists no common goal and every one is working towards their personal goals or a team whose team members know each other’s strategies too well do you think any team work exists?

The above mentioned scenarios of different teams constitute at least 70-80% of the teams, every one works for their own motives, we call it selfishness but what I want to conclude is that team work is a farce or at least it would become a farce once we get to know the team better, so why team building exercises and all, let there be a directive, contribute to the company’s growth and help yourselves grow.