Laid off from a startup and moved fo corpos did gave me perspective,the first year working with the team works really well, we managed to get a lot of stuff really done and business were very happy.
And there came the Agile Coaches telling us to "Collaborate" while disguising as a need to serve his own agenda ( as he's also a PO for another squad ). So workshops on Collaboration, Explicit Expectation on PM have all authority and controls PO, for 8 freaking months just to get a competent team to work with a junior team with no agency nor even willingness to be mentored or do anything. So somewhat this incidentally aligns perfectly.
Corporate always manage to hire incompetent people, not firing them, and let others over-compensate for their failures, so yeah, its not really obvious but its there.
I believe the good collaboration can happen, but when people actually go of their ego and start listening and actually doing the work.
igor47•1h ago
ChrisMarshallNY•57m ago
Teams are how you do big stuff. I’m really good at what I do, but I’ve been forced to reduce my scope, working alone. I do much smaller projects, than our team used to do.
But the killer in teams, is communication overhead, and much of that, is imposed by management, trying to get visibility. If the team is good, they often communicate fine, internally.
Most of the examples he gave, are tools of management, seeking visibility.
But it’s also vital for management to have visibility. A team can’t just be a “black box,” but a really good team can have a lot of autonomy and agency.
You need good teams, and good managers. If you don’t have both, it’s likely to be less-than-optimal.
newAccount2025•13m ago
On my second team, the visibility theater took over, upper management set and reset and reset and reset our direction, and nobody was happy. In retrospect, I should have said no immediately. Trusting and empowering your people is hard to beat.
icegreentea2•35m ago
I think the author has identified that most organizations both fail at effective collaboration, and also use collaboration to paper over their failures.
I think the author maybe over-corrects by leaning on the idea that "only small teams actually get stuff done", and honestly I don't think anyone should be using SLA Marshall/Men Against Fire as an analogy for like... office work (if nothing else, even if you take his words at face value, then the percentage of US infantry who fired their rifles went up from 15-25% in WW2 to ~50% in Korea due to training improvements), but I can get behind the idea that a lot of organizations are setup to diffuse responsibility.
I also do think it's interesting to think about building the Pyramids. For the vast majority of people involved... I don't think modern audiences would call their work relationship or style "collaborative". Usually we use "collaborative" in opposition (at different times) to "working alone", "working with strict boundaries", and "being highly directed in what to do". Being on a work gang, or even being a team foreman is very much "no working alone", but those were also likely highly directed jobs (you must bring this specific stone to this specific location by this time) with strict boundaries.
stanleykm•33m ago
gotwaz•22m ago
What organization, skills, leadership is required to explore a jungle for gold is very different from what organization, skills and leadership is required to run a gold mine.
So we get explore-exploit tradeoffs, satisficing vs optimizing choices etc.