Three Cats, No Pride
I walked into the kitchen one morning to find all three of my cats playing together. I immediately wondered what was going on. The three cats never play together: the young male will happily play with either of the two, but the older female never wants to play with him. I started looking a little more carefully at what was actually going on.
At first glance, the cats were playing with one of the catnip mice we have kicking around. Then I noticed two more significant details: one, the mouse the cats were playing with was gray, not green. Two, when one of the cats dropped the mouse, it moved on its own. This is not a trait typically associated with catnip mice.
These two observations led, in turn, to a reevaluation of the action. The cats were not playing with one another. Rather, they were all attempting to be the one cat who caught the mouse. However, as soon as one cat dropped the mouse and it started running, another cat would block the first cat from chasing it. This would leave the third cat free to chase the mouse. As soon as the mouse was cornered, it would immediately bare its little tiny teeth and raise its little tiny claws and squeak fiercely at the cat. This would so surprise the cat that it would hesitate, the mouse would run, and another cat would get in the way again.
It was very much like an old Tweety and Sylvester cartoon, in which Sylvester and a strange cat spent more time fighting one another over which one of them would get to eat Tweety than they did trying to catch Tweety, with the result that neither got the bird. With the real cats, I eventually caught the mouse and tossed it outside. Had the cats cooperated, of course, the cartoon bird and the real mouse would each have been toast.
What we had here was the proverbial failure of teamwork. Like many teams, there was a clear and agreed upon goal: for the cats, it was catching the mouse; in the office, it is the moral equivalent. What there was not, however, was any organization or leadership. Without leadership, the cats had no pride. Similarly, in an office environment, a lack of leadership means wasted effort, miscommunications, and a lack of pride in the work. In other words, having what is nominally a common goal doesn’t work well without someone there to provide direction and to communicate that goal to the team. For example, the creations from Black Lagoon Technology are routinely badly flawed because the company insists on a policy of leaderless teams. Lacking leadership, the team members constantly argue and get in one another’s way until the pressure of a looming deadline either causes the team to come together to throw something out the door, or causes the team to come together to blame one another for failing to throw something out the door. This approach cost the company on the order of six figures per month in customer refunds and cancelled contracts. To make matters worse, much like the cats and the mouse, new companies were starting to enter their space and steal their customers.
Solving the problem involved a recognition that leaderless teams literally don’t work: to wit, they get nothing done.
It is the job of the leader to not just get team members excited and working together, but to keep them that way. People work hard when they have pride in their work. While threats of being fired may produce compliance, pride in the work is what produces commitment, enthusiasm, and the willingness to put in that little extra effort that makes the difference between “good enough” and “outstanding.” It is the leader’s ability to effectively and enthusiastically show each member of the team how their contribution matters that determines the quality of the outcome.
Like the cats, when there is no pride, there is no teamwork. If you want to be successful, your team members need to care about what they are doing and take pride in the outcome. Otherwise, you may as well be herding cats.
