What the flock?
In my book Change Magic, I came up with a fun organisational creativity exercise that uses our ability to create metaphors to gain insight into organisational culture. It's very easy, you just look at a team or organisation and come up with a collective noun to describe them, like a flock of sheep or a shoal of fish. For example, people entering the Change Magic book competition came up with these suggestions:
▫ A babble of partners
▫ A conspiracy of support staff
▫ A sabotage of IT staff
▫ A squabble of female teachers
▫ A scribble of art directors
▫ A seizure of support workers
I was explaining this to Lois the other day and a thought occurred to me: what is the difference between some sheep and a flock of sheep?
In organisations, I think the collective noun 'team' is much overused. In fact, it has come to refer to hierarchy rather than collective purpose. You see, I think that the difference between a flock of sheep and some sheep is that you can see the sheep in the flock acting with common purpose whereas sheep by themselves act as individuals.
I have rarely seen a sales team, for example, that actually worked as a team - which makes their annual team building event seem even more ridiculous. All year they are encouraged to compete against each other - for resources, for rankings, for promotions - and one day a year they are required to act as a team for the benefit of a facilitator.
Anyway, rather than just sitting and thinking about this post like you usually do, this time take the trouble to post a reply. Post one, or both, of two things:
A collective noun about a particular group of people in an organisation
or
What you think is the difference between a flock of sheep and some sheep
▫ A babble of partners
▫ A conspiracy of support staff
▫ A sabotage of IT staff
▫ A squabble of female teachers
▫ A scribble of art directors
▫ A seizure of support workers
I was explaining this to Lois the other day and a thought occurred to me: what is the difference between some sheep and a flock of sheep?
In organisations, I think the collective noun 'team' is much overused. In fact, it has come to refer to hierarchy rather than collective purpose. You see, I think that the difference between a flock of sheep and some sheep is that you can see the sheep in the flock acting with common purpose whereas sheep by themselves act as individuals.
I have rarely seen a sales team, for example, that actually worked as a team - which makes their annual team building event seem even more ridiculous. All year they are encouraged to compete against each other - for resources, for rankings, for promotions - and one day a year they are required to act as a team for the benefit of a facilitator.
Anyway, rather than just sitting and thinking about this post like you usually do, this time take the trouble to post a reply. Post one, or both, of two things:
A collective noun about a particular group of people in an organisation
or
What you think is the difference between a flock of sheep and some sheep
2 Comments:
I think sales teams do act as a team given the right kind of leadership. Over the past 3 months, I have been working directly with a sales team. They came to me as individuals, and over the course of the 3 months, I turned them into a team. Collectively the common goal is to sell more product. If we sell more product, the company profits are higher and if the company is publicly traded, then the higher profits increases share holder return, and the overall value of the company goes up and then its good times for all - usually!
Sales is a numbers game. As a member of a sales team, I am really competing against myself. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what Joe or Jane did, it only matters what numbers I post on the board.
Sales managers take advantage of our natural propensity to compete by posting the numbers where all can see. Sales people tend to be competitive and so don't like to see their names at the bottom of the board. My 'winning' isn't really about directly beating you. My 'winning' is dependent on beating the numbers.
I have worked in sales teams where we helped each other out with leads, ideas, and pitches. But one of the main things we did for each other was provide a sense of comradeship from which we each drew motivation and inspiration.
Let's face it, sales can suck! And we can feel battered and beaten by customers and clients and so we turn to each other as a sales team to keep our spirits up and to get us motivated to fight the good fight.
I have watched the sales team I have been working with over the last three months really bond as a team. I have seen them help each other with sales ideas. I have seen them help each directly on a call. I have seen them help team members who were down pick their spirits back up.
Every morning before the team hit the phones, I would run a 15 minute team focus session in which I would helped the team collectively get their minds focused for another day of selling. And I always ended each session with the team member stating what they wanted help with that day. They shared this so that I or any member of the team could help them through out the course of the day.
When I was selling stocks and bonds for Merrill Lynch, it was the strength of the team that help me do as well as I did. Even though none of us wanted to see our names at the bottom of the board, there were very few who wouldn't also reach out and help a fellow member of the team. I remember one month when it looked like I wasn't going to have enough production credits to get my bonus. One team memember, who didn't want to see me miss my bonus, gave me a few of his lower value clients to help me get the numbers I needed.
In short, what I am saying is it depends on the leadership and the culture of the company as to whether the sales team behaves as a team.
Good point and now I think of it I have seen sales teams work like that, although in the IT/telecoms industry the only collaborative sales team I worked in was at BT where no-one ever hit target! In other companies where targets were pursued aggresively, there was certainly a culture of competition and you're right, it was definitely created by the sales managers. At one company, on the annual sales jolly in Dubai, one London sales manager stabbed another with a fork at dinner! The two of them were constantly trying to prove their superiority.
I read about a company that had a Porsche and a Skoda as pool cars, in the days when Skodas were not very good. Each month, the highest performing salesman would be given the Porsche and the lowest performer the Skoda - for the whole month.
I agree, the culture Clay describes is much better!
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