Teamwork - A Common Goal

Relax Max pointed out, correctly, that NASA was most effective because the whole team involved was completely devoted to the same goal. He has a valid point and it's pertinent to the discussion.

Assemble the best team in the world, it won't do a lick o' good if they aren't striving for the same goal. Want a team where putting egos aside and real teamwork is most likely to occur, even with diverse personalities? It better be something they believe in passionately.

I think many of the great accomplishments in the path (performed by teams) were the result of people believing passionately in a goal and putting aside everything, egos, personal gain, personal fame, in order to make it so. Other fairly damn decent accomplishments were made by people who felt what they worked for was worth the effort.

It's one reason the sense of unity is never stronger than when fighting what appears as a just war - one Pearl Harbor and everyone is willing to make a sacrifice to address the threat (in fact, an external threat is a great way to put everyone on the same page).

Actually, that's one of the things that can be quite fearsome about this tendency. When people believe in something, they are often willing to sacrifice, to do anything to make something so. That belief doesn't have to be logical or correct or reasonable. The passion is the key. Since fear and hatred are often among the most passionate emotions, teams gathered out of a joint hatred or fear can often result in terrible things. These teams are often the most driven because they are so passionate. Like Al Quaida. Like the IRA.

But it can be wonderful too. People driven by the notion taking man into space (and the team anxious to one-up us in the Soviet Union) took us to the surface of the moon in one generation.

And that absence of that passion, that lack of shared vision or dedication to a common goal (if not sharing the opinions on how to get there) is, I believe, one of the things that make our government so ineffective right now (and, in fact, for some time). The people making decisions aren't nearly so interested in accomplishing good things as they are in looking good, in taking credit for progress (or even for obstruction). You don't have to be a genius in teamwork to know that that's a piss-poor recipe for teamwork.