Teamwork-the Necesssary evil
I don't read non fiction esp the self help and motivational books at least do not go specifically looking for it because i have a tendency ,a really bad and negative one some would say-- to argue it out in the mind with the author and trash all the perfect solutionsdescribed.
yeah im a cynic to the core and so i tend to argue it out and as is quoted
"It's hard to argue against cynics - they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side"
but i always feel but im not a pessimist really(not at heart may be my mind has leaning towards pessimism) but as another quote says
"cynics are well informed optimists".
It is hard for me to just get inspired by all the stuff in those self help books but i dont think bad of themnot these days at least because i have seen at first hand people being affected for the good by some of them.They simply dont suit me because i see things as they are ....sadly the darker side.

I did read a few(i can count them on one hand) and my reactions to them i'll post later .let me first start off with the inspiration for this post.this relates to my first post on my blogit was something against the buzzword called team work (it can be read HERE ).So today trying to get my latest dose of fiction as i scanned through the library i found something echoing my thought a book titled Why Teams Don't Work by Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley.
i was touched ...oh a few more in that rare list who understand my strange viewso i picked it up but i could only take one book and was not willing to take the book home instead of my novel for a fortnight(non fiction is risk and titles may betray).
so i sat down happily and in 30 mins flat browsed the book over and felt very happy that someone sees through this muck and im not that weird.but whats the best part is and i agree here is that its become a necessary evil in todays worldand they do speak some stark truths.they identify the problems correctly the solutions though as ever are arguable.
They begin it wonderfully saying teamwork as in sports given as example in most inspiring booksis useless in realtime corporate world.the part where as caufield(narrator in the book catcher in the rye) wud say it killed me was this----They tell you how useless Trust falls(To fall backwards from an elevated location blindfolded, and be caught by your team) are in building a team in real time work scenarios.
It is another of those antics used by those great inspirational thinkers---- and i went flashback immediatelyto when i joined this job --- firstly we at india implement such stuff without thinking about cultural and social differences.

It so happened that our new joinees were asked to participate in this.Most girls refused to it and the hep manager(actually he was one of the few good and sensible one in the org but i guess he was as good as the management principles and insensitive to the social perspective) said come on the last time we did it all girls too did it.still many just were mum but one girl sportingly went forward and yeah the game was over in a minute.god knows what changed in making her more trusting in a team but what we all could see and hear was this.quite some team guys who were there were joking on the lines of ---- yes we sure know your weight and....and so on.this is why i hate such gimmicks.

The other thing said was about the bane of this inter and intra team competitions.I remember since the time of my previous job i hated the concept and argued at lengths with my friendabout how useless and terrible this was.with their examples i simply felt vindicated.this is what is said in the book."there is no such thing as friendly competition.especially on teams.They are fantastic for personal breakthroughs with ones own demons and attitude improvement but not for team work".i mean my previous manager ( as i said earlier in a post he deserves a blog for his atrocious stupidity) used to say come on compete against each other to do more.it was sickening to hear the way he said it and the he called us to be a great team.
The raw truths explained are
"the truth is teams are inherently inferior to individuals in terms of efficiency esp if a single person has sufficient info for that task".
"teams are trouble because there are more people and people are trouble".

There was some more good identification of problems (already this post is long )All in all being a team member whos on the suffering end of all team...our team propaganda(damn i cant even gift my manager this book...it 'll be a straight proof of my being not a cooperative team member.) id say it will help anyone (most managers put so much effort to understand technical and thoeretical nonsense but never try to understand people) who firstly accepts that team work is evil but necessary rather than say
Team work is great and blah blah blah .