Team Risks

Teams enable us to do things we could never accomplish working individually — or if we could accomplish them, they would just take too long to be worth doing. For that reason alone, we need teams. But working in teams carries with it risks that arise much more often than when we work as individuals. Here's a short catalog of these risks.

Runaway damage risk

The power of teamwork amplifies not only the team's ability to do good, but also its ability to do damage. When we produce wrong-headed output for whatever reason, we must undo the damage we do. But before recognizing what happened, a team can do much more damage than an individual can.

Interpersonal conflict risk

When there are interpersonal problems in teams, everyone's productivity can be degraded. And the conflict might be unrelated to the work at hand. It can be a residual effect of a previous effort, or it can arise from something as unrelated to the work as unfounded rumors of changes in office assignments.

Decision-making risk

The word team means different things to different people. For example, with respect to decision processes, some of us believe that team means that each person's opinion is of equal weight. Others are searching only for work to do, and will do that work without question. Teams must define their decision processes for corresponding classes of situations. If they don't, each member will assume that their preferred decision process is in force. That difference in expectations can lead to interpersonal conflict. See "Decisions, Decisions: I," Point Lookout for November 17, 2004, for a summary of common decision processes.

Coordination risk

Teamwork is inherently parallel. The working members of the team assume that the parts they're working on will fit with the parts other people are working on. If a problem develops, and one of the parts has to be revised, some of the work already completed might have to be done again. This possibility is much less likely when a single person does all the work, because that person is presumably aware of all that has been done or will be done. Coordination risk is highest when interpersonal communication is the least effective, or when uncertainty is greatest.

Wariness risk

Inherent in The power of teamwork amplifies
not only the team's ability to do
good, but also its ability to do damageparallelism is the need to trust that teammates working on other elements are honoring their commitments. That is, we give our all to one portion of the work, trusting teammates to do the same with theirs. If trust is absent, and people become wary, they devote some of their efforts to protecting themselves from blame. That is what makes wariness so expensive.

Intra-task deadlock risk

Within the team's task, deadlock occurs when some members of the team are waiting for the output of one or more of the rest of the team. The whole thing can lock up if a dependency loop develops. If a subtask is late because of unanticipated difficulty or lost workdays, the rest of the team can become stuck.

Team-based development is different from the scaled-up effort of a single individual. Think it through carefully.  Top    Next Issue

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Coming April 30: On Planning in Plan-Hostile Environments: II

When we finally execute plans, we encounter obstacles. So we find workarounds or adjust the plans. But there are times when nothing we try gets us back on track. When this happens for nearly every plan, we might be working in a plan-hostile environment. Available here and by RSS on April 30.

And on May 7: Subject Matter Bullying

Most workplace bullying tactics have analogs in the schoolyard — isolation, physical attacks, name-calling, and rumor-mongering are common examples. Subject matter bullying might be an exception, because it requires expertise in a sophisticated knowledge domain. And that's where trouble begins. Available here and by RSS on May 7.

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