Good Manager, Bad Manager: Us Versus Them, Team Player

Diana has just joined a midsize startup to run the long-neglected mobile team. She was told coming in that the team was a mess, so her first step is to quickly hire in a bunch of new people who worked for her at BigCo. They aren’t quite a culture fit, and the team quickly turns into a clique of developers who see themselves as better than the rest of the organization. While the technology has improved, they seem to be clashing a lot with the product team, and ultimately the apps aren’t evolving very quickly. After a year, Diana gets fed up with the company and quits. The rest of her new team soon follows, leaving the company right back where it started.

It can be hard for new managers to create a shared team identity. Many of them default to an identity built around the specifics of their job function or technology. They unite the team by emphasizing how this identity is special as compared to other teams. When they go too far, this identity is used to make the team feel superior to the rest of the company, and the team is more interested in its superiority than the company’s goals. Rallying a team in this way is a shallow binding that is vulnerable to many dysfunctions:

Fragile to the loss of the leader. In-group teams tend to be very fragile to the loss of their leader. When you hire a manager who builds a clique, that clique is likely to dissolve and leave the company if the manager leaves the company. This problem makes it that much harder to address the problems that the manager is causing by creating a clique in the first place.
Resistant to outside ideas. In-groups tend to be resistant to ideas that do not come from those within the group. This means that they miss opportunities to learn and grow. The lack of growth for members of the team often causes the best members of the team to leave not just the group, but the company. Because they believe they’re in the best group but they still find themselves bored, they don’t appreciate the growth they could find just by switching to a new team.
Empire building. Leaders who favor an us-versus-them style tend to be empire builders, seeking out opportunities to grow their teams and their mandates without concern for what is best for the overall organization. This often results in competition with other leaders for headcount and control of projects.
Inflexibility. These groups tend to struggle against change that comes from outside the group. Reorganizations, cancelled projects, and shifting focus all can cause breaks in the core parts of their identity. Whether it’s a move from functional groups to cross-functional teams, delaying the iPad application, or prioritizing a new product, the change can devastate the fragile bonds of the team to the company.

As a manager, be careful about focusing on your teams to the exclusion of the wider group. Even when you have been hired to fix a team, remember that the company has gotten this far because of some fundamental strengths. Before you try to change everything to fit your vision, take the time to understand the company’s strengths and culture, and think about how you’re going to create a team that works well with this culture, not against it. The trick is not to focus on what’s broken, but to identify existing strengths and cultivate them.

Neil has also joined a startup where things are chaotic. While he can see that he needs to change the team, he moves cautiously to fire people and takes the time to make sure that new hires are always vetted by someone who’s been with the company for a while. He spends a lot of time working closely with his peers in product, and proposes a path forward that emphasizes cross-functional collaboration. He focuses on setting clear goals and communicating them to his team. Things start out slow, but over time the entire organization feels stronger and both the technology and the product have improved dramatically.

Durable teams are built on a shared purpose that comes from the company itself, and they align themselves with the company’s values (see “Applying Core Values” in Chapter 9 for more on this topic). They have a clear understanding of the company’s mission, and they see how their team fits into this mission. They can see that the mission requires many different types of teams, but all of the teams share a set of values. By creating a strong and enduring alignment between the team, its individuals, and the overall company, this purpose-based binding makes teams:

Resilient to loss of individuals. While the clique is fragile, especially to the loss of the leader, the purpose-driven team tends to be very resilient to the loss of individuals and leadership. Because they’re loyal to the mission of the larger organization, they can see a path forward even through loss.
Driven to find better ways to achieve their purpose. Purpose-driven teams are more open to new ideas and value changes that can help them serve their purpose better. They care less about the source of an idea than its merit in achieving their goals. The members of these teams are interested in learning from others outside their function, and they actively seek out chances to collaborate more broadly to create the best results.
First-team focused. Leaders who are strong team players understand that the people who report to them are not their first team. Instead, their first team is their peers across the company. This first-team focus helps them make decisions that consider the needs of the company as a whole before focusing on the needs of their team.
Open to changes that serve their purpose. The collaborative leader understands that changes will happen to serve the wider purpose. Teams will change structure and people will need to move to where the business needs are. With that knowledge, these leaders create teams that are more flexible and understanding of frequent change in service of the larger vision.

Getting clarity about the purpose of your team and your company can take time. In startups especially, there is often some confusion about the current goals and even sometimes the underlying mission. In the case where the goals are fuzzy and the mission is unclear, do your best to understand the company culture and think about how you can set your teams up to work well within that culture. By collaborating across teams and across business functions, your teams will come to understand the bigger picture and appreciate their mission as part of that picture.