How to make your team fall apart
Bob Turek of Project Management 411 made an excellent post about working together. Naturally, this inspired me to write my own post about how NOT to work together.
Keep everything to yourself. You want to know why? Because everyone will steal your super genius ideas. Dont’ share anything. If you’re making a group presentation, just tell your teammates that your part will be a surprise.
Don’t bother asking your teammates about their own tasks. After all, they’ll be doing the exact same thing you’re doing – keeping their entire contribution a secret. Besides, why ask? It’s not like you need some kind of continuity or organization.
If a team member notifies you that he or she needs a certain resource, don’t take their request seriously. If they really needed access to some equipment or paperwork, they should just get it themselves. They’re not the boss of you (even if they could be your supervisors).
Make sure there are no rewards. Incentives, gifts, prizes, and free lunches turn everyone into a wussie.
Don’t take any action. There’s a chance that some of your teammates are the ones doing the really important stuff, so you can just slack off and prepare a speech filled with nonsensical jargon. You’re too busy “synergizing concepts” and “conceptualizing synergies”.
Why should I leave the first comment? It just means everyone else will take my concept use derivatives of it to advance their own position.
(hee hee)
The sad thing about these is that they are often followed and justified with some of the ridiculous logic that you revealed.
That’s actually true, Bob. Looking back at my list, I just realized how often I see that kind of thing on “The Apprentice”. (Then again, it’s a contest, so that may warp other people’s business ethics in some way)