It's certainly not a family, but a "team" probably isn't right, either.
If you company wants to use a sports team metaphor, that's fine, but just remember that many professional sports have players unions and guaranteed contracts.
Oh, what's that? Not such a big fan of the sports team metaphor now?
They also tend to make tradition-based rather than evidence-based decisions. How many times have you heard, "hiring so-and-so just (made|didn't make) good football-sense"? Superstition is extremely strong in sports franchises.
If you want every one of your employees to be a "superstar", just pay them millions a year, and the sports metaphor is a great fit.
Otherwise, sometimes you gotta work with what you've got. In real life, you can't just let everyone go who isn't a superstar, unless people are tripping over themselves to get a spot at your company.
Using sports metaphors is a particularly bad way to go about it in this instance. The average young NFL player is only expecting a career lasting about 5 years, maybe 10 for exceptional guys; The average young office worker is looking for 40 years.
If you were fired as frequently as players get traded in NFL, we'd be living hellish careers!
Using American sports teams is a particularly bad example because the draft system typical in American sports means athletes are not free to choose among employers [1]. In addition, American sports teams tend to be massively subsidized in the form of stadium and infrastructure funding from the public till.
It's even worse as a metaphor for American companies because the typical office worker isn't under contract let alone a union negotiated one.[2]
[1] Ok, maybe the 'no poach' collusion among tech industry titans makes it a little better for that sector.
[2] Where the American professional sports metaphor does fit a bit is in its tendency toward non-investment in youth development - i.e. on the job training - which in the American sports model is subsidized from the public till in the form of scholastic sports in local high schools and public universities. Elsewhere in the world, professional sports teams tend to provide elite training to children and teenagers under a model similar to that of Angel Investing. A few big winners pay for all the false positives.
Using sports metaphors is a particularly bad way to go about it in this instance.
It's not one-to-one but I think you're overemphasizing both career length as a fatal flaw to the metaphor and the strictness of the comparison the author is trying to draw.
It's a sensible metaphor for the limited points the author wants to make, then he hedges to prevent pushing the metaphor past breaking so I can't point out we don't have office cheerleaders.
In this sense, a business is far more like a sports team than a family.
Of course, a professional sports team isn’t a perfect analog to your business.
But isn't that the point they are trying to make - that sports teams can be effective despite have very high rates of staff turnover because everyone has realistic expectations of the employer-employee relationship?
I think the point is, if you set proper expectations in the relationship you can have a cohesive team even if it's known that some people aren't going to be there forever.
And a lot of pro sports players have fixed contracts can't imagine a firm wanting to continuing to pay some one for 5 years when their job becomes redundant.
A typical company is no more a professional sports team than it's Ward, Wally, June, and the Beaver. More likely it's the sports team equivalent of a 2am domestic dispute call to the trailer park on Cops - leadership is running a win at all costs T-ball team.
The sports metaphor doesn't change the fact theyre cutting people for their obsession with ponies.
In general, your company should not be a family in the sense that they have the right to demand your help whenever and wherever. With a company, there is a contract and limits.
Besides which, you're lucky if you have a tiny handful of people in the entire world with whom things are "in the rainbows and unicorns sense". Rainbows and unicorns actually takes a whole lot of hard work at making interpersonal relations work well.
How about we just stop saying a company is like-a-family or like-a-team or like-a-band or like-an-anything-that-isn't-a-company? Companies are companies. They are their own distinct thing.
While the article tries it really only manages to scratch the surface of the iceberg when it comes to the, generally epic, failure of company structures to provide a meaningful environment in which human beings can thrive as whole beings.
The idea of the "sports team" is not functional - the limited human interactions necessary within an artificially established playing field will NEVER mirror the real world challenges a company, and the people within it, faces. Sure that artificial playing field allows an easy "team" mentality but this "team" will never work against real-life challenges.
Team sports primarily consists of human interaction. You practice with your team, have meetings with the coaching staff, film sessions, team meals, travel together, team training sessions, and that's before you even set foot on the field or court.
And the leadership and communication skills are directly transferable and valuable to a business setting. The business unit as a sports team idea is a bit tired and cliche at this point because it's been a comparison made for at least 50 years.
But that speaks to the cliche's validity. David Foster Wallace wrote in Infinite Jest "cliches earned their status as cliches because they were so obviously true."
A sports team faces many real challenges besides the artificial challenges on the field: many months of training before a big playoff, which involves individual player discipline, extensive interaction with the coach and the other players, interaction with the press etc.
Where the comparison breaks down, I think, is that the activity of individual employees in a company (especially a big one) isn't nearly as visible as the activity of an athlete. Therefore, there's less incentive to be a "team player", since it won't necessarily help you get a better job at a different company.
One very common type is of the talk is cheap variety. Management can declare their company to be a team or a family or an enchanted kingdom. They read about it in Harvard Review. Like a mission statement or a slogan , these thing only mean something when you put your money (literally and figuratively) where your mouth is. Most don't.
The second type is a half hearted analogy. The company really intends to be like a team, a family or a special forces unit. But, the cost to really making that mean a lot is high. You can make the business somewhat family like or team like relatively cheaply and inform your company culture, but there are going to be countess cases where the cost is high. FO employees to really buy into it, they need to accept this costs. Most don't. What they have is rhetoric and a certain amount of investment into team building. Fair enough, but not what this article is decribing
The type of team like environment the article is describing doesn't come cheap? You need to have good feedback & measurement mechanisms for performance on the team level. You need success and failure to be very well compensated for and it needs to be based on team performance. Are you compensating success well enough that members of the team will want to see the poorest performers periodically replaced?
A professional sports team is an exceptional environment. The people there are high achievers and they are ambitious. They are the 1%, most hardworking and talented. They get a lot of money and a lot of glory. They're in 'once in a hundred lifetimes' state of mind. Can your company offer that? Is 5 years of success on you "team" the pinnacle of a career? Are they making more now than they ever will be? Will these be the glory years they relive?
Functions with very straightforward feedback, like sales tend to develop these dynamics with the right compensation structure. A small startup with only a handful of high equity employees can develop this culture naturally. Trying to artificially create it elsewhere is hard. I also suspect it's near impossible a group with over 50 or so people.
It's easy to say this stuff. Does Netflix really put this into practice? Does anyone?
Lots of companies are different. There are some that are more like sports teams, and some that are like families, and heck, some actually are families.
This article does nothing but debate semantics. Every metaphor breaks down at some point, so I don't see the need to debate which works the best.
#1 reason a company is not a family. You do (or don't do things) for your family despite personal loss because it is good for the whole. That is something most people do not do for their company, nor should they.
The problem is that the way family relationships are different from all other relationships (namely that they are lifelong) is the exact way in which a business is unlike a family.
Really? But I want to believe the paternalistic BS by my bosses (who'd fire me at the first chance of reduced profit margins without a second thought), and fill the empty whole in the center of my life with some purpose based on my job.
[+] [-] jordan0day|11 years ago|reply
If you company wants to use a sports team metaphor, that's fine, but just remember that many professional sports have players unions and guaranteed contracts.
Oh, what's that? Not such a big fan of the sports team metaphor now?
[+] [-] moron4hire|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csbrooks|11 years ago|reply
Otherwise, sometimes you gotta work with what you've got. In real life, you can't just let everyone go who isn't a superstar, unless people are tripping over themselves to get a spot at your company.
[+] [-] adwf|11 years ago|reply
If you were fired as frequently as players get traded in NFL, we'd be living hellish careers!
[+] [-] brudgers|11 years ago|reply
It's even worse as a metaphor for American companies because the typical office worker isn't under contract let alone a union negotiated one.[2]
[1] Ok, maybe the 'no poach' collusion among tech industry titans makes it a little better for that sector.
[2] Where the American professional sports metaphor does fit a bit is in its tendency toward non-investment in youth development - i.e. on the job training - which in the American sports model is subsidized from the public till in the form of scholastic sports in local high schools and public universities. Elsewhere in the world, professional sports teams tend to provide elite training to children and teenagers under a model similar to that of Angel Investing. A few big winners pay for all the false positives.
[+] [-] forgottenpass|11 years ago|reply
It's not one-to-one but I think you're overemphasizing both career length as a fatal flaw to the metaphor and the strictness of the comparison the author is trying to draw.
It's a sensible metaphor for the limited points the author wants to make, then he hedges to prevent pushing the metaphor past breaking so I can't point out we don't have office cheerleaders.
In this sense, a business is far more like a sports team than a family.
Of course, a professional sports team isn’t a perfect analog to your business.
[+] [-] arethuza|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] overgard|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maaku|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjf4|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|11 years ago|reply
The sports metaphor doesn't change the fact theyre cutting people for their obsession with ponies.
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|11 years ago|reply
On the other hand, your company might be quite like a family in Lannister sense.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
No, but we use metaphors for their common sense interpretation (the average normal/loving family in this case).
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|11 years ago|reply
Besides which, you're lucky if you have a tiny handful of people in the entire world with whom things are "in the rainbows and unicorns sense". Rainbows and unicorns actually takes a whole lot of hard work at making interpersonal relations work well.
[+] [-] moron4hire|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dingdingdang|11 years ago|reply
The idea of the "sports team" is not functional - the limited human interactions necessary within an artificially established playing field will NEVER mirror the real world challenges a company, and the people within it, faces. Sure that artificial playing field allows an easy "team" mentality but this "team" will never work against real-life challenges.
[+] [-] cjf4|11 years ago|reply
Team sports primarily consists of human interaction. You practice with your team, have meetings with the coaching staff, film sessions, team meals, travel together, team training sessions, and that's before you even set foot on the field or court.
And the leadership and communication skills are directly transferable and valuable to a business setting. The business unit as a sports team idea is a bit tired and cliche at this point because it's been a comparison made for at least 50 years.
But that speaks to the cliche's validity. David Foster Wallace wrote in Infinite Jest "cliches earned their status as cliches because they were so obviously true."
[+] [-] scribu|11 years ago|reply
Where the comparison breaks down, I think, is that the activity of individual employees in a company (especially a big one) isn't nearly as visible as the activity of an athlete. Therefore, there's less incentive to be a "team player", since it won't necessarily help you get a better job at a different company.
[+] [-] netcan|11 years ago|reply
One very common type is of the talk is cheap variety. Management can declare their company to be a team or a family or an enchanted kingdom. They read about it in Harvard Review. Like a mission statement or a slogan , these thing only mean something when you put your money (literally and figuratively) where your mouth is. Most don't.
The second type is a half hearted analogy. The company really intends to be like a team, a family or a special forces unit. But, the cost to really making that mean a lot is high. You can make the business somewhat family like or team like relatively cheaply and inform your company culture, but there are going to be countess cases where the cost is high. FO employees to really buy into it, they need to accept this costs. Most don't. What they have is rhetoric and a certain amount of investment into team building. Fair enough, but not what this article is decribing
The type of team like environment the article is describing doesn't come cheap? You need to have good feedback & measurement mechanisms for performance on the team level. You need success and failure to be very well compensated for and it needs to be based on team performance. Are you compensating success well enough that members of the team will want to see the poorest performers periodically replaced?
A professional sports team is an exceptional environment. The people there are high achievers and they are ambitious. They are the 1%, most hardworking and talented. They get a lot of money and a lot of glory. They're in 'once in a hundred lifetimes' state of mind. Can your company offer that? Is 5 years of success on you "team" the pinnacle of a career? Are they making more now than they ever will be? Will these be the glory years they relive?
Functions with very straightforward feedback, like sales tend to develop these dynamics with the right compensation structure. A small startup with only a handful of high equity employees can develop this culture naturally. Trying to artificially create it elsewhere is hard. I also suspect it's near impossible a group with over 50 or so people.
It's easy to say this stuff. Does Netflix really put this into practice? Does anyone?
[+] [-] smegmalife|11 years ago|reply
This article does nothing but debate semantics. Every metaphor breaks down at some point, so I don't see the need to debate which works the best.
[+] [-] vkjv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hellbreakslose|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Dakuan|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kiro|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrestko|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jdfmiller|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|11 years ago|reply
Doesn't exactly show Harvard in a good light that one of their publications uses such god awful English.
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
Really? But I want to believe the paternalistic BS by my bosses (who'd fire me at the first chance of reduced profit margins without a second thought), and fill the empty whole in the center of my life with some purpose based on my job.