The paradox of the unmanaged team

It is not easy to conceptualise a system of organisation that is based upon temporary unmanaged groups where everyone has so much freedom and autonomy. The instinctive reaction is to ask how you can get members of an unmanaged group to obey rules that enable them to co-operate with each other. It seems quite beyond the imagination to visualise a group that is not held together by rules. Yet, rules are the manifestations of management and if a group is not managed, then, by definition, there can be no rules.

Just imagine if I'd gone into my wholesalers in Berwick Street and said to them. "Right, before I start buying I want to sort out a set of rules to define how we are going to work together". They'd think I'd gone crazy. Yet these wholesalers were members of a group, a virtual group, a virtual team: my virtual team of buyers.

The unmanaged group isn't held together by rules, but, by benefits of mutual advantage. In other words an unmanaged group of autonomous decision makers will work together only if it is is in each of their interests to do so. It is the benefits of co-operating that hold an unmanaged group together, not any rules. Where do the benefits come from? As we saw in chapter 11, benefits can manifest spontaneously from co-operative activity that increases efficiency. These are the profits that emanate from a win-win situation.

Having established that mutual benefit holds groups together, it becomes pertinent to ask certain questions:

1) Who is going to initiate such groups?

2) Who will be the one to identify a win-win situation where co-operation produces benefits?

3) Who is going to decide who is in the group and who is not?

4) How does anyone get invited to take part in a win-win situation?

The first three questions have the same answer. It is going to be an initiator: someone who is able to identify a win-win situation where co-operation can produce benefits. However, it will take more than just recognition of the win-win situation to form a co-operative group. The initiator will have to provide enough evidence that profits will result from a proposed co-operation before anyone else will co-operate.

Even if an initiator can recognise a win-win situation and be able to produce the evidence that profits will result, the initiator will still be a long way away from being able to bring about a co-operative group. The initiator will still have to:

a) Know who to contact

b) Get their attention sufficient enough to listen to the proposition

c) Have sufficient credibility to be convincing

The fourth question has similar communication hurdles to overcome. Everyone would like to be invited into a situation where co--operation can create wealth for everyone involved, but, to get invited into such a win-win situation you have to have some valuable quality or asset that is needed by the group. Nobody wants be in a co-operative situation with people who aren't able to pull their weight.

The people most likely to be wanted by initiators to bring into a win-win situation are people with money, special skills, contacts or communication abilities. But, just like the initiator, it is one thing to have a valuable asset and quite another to be able to inform and convince other people that they are available. The people who have assets and want to get into win-win situations must

a) Know who to make aware of their assets

b) Get initiators to investigate their assets

c) Have sufficient credibility that their assets can be valued at their true worth.

Looking at the two positions of the initiators and the asset holders, they require almost identical communication strategies. The y have to find suitable contacts, they have to get their attention and they have to convince them of their credibility.

It might seem strange to struggling artist or programmer that they are in a similar position to an entrepreneur or a financier but the reality is that everybody needs other people and the right kind of people have to be found, cultivated and convinced. This requires a communication strategy: a strategy that is optimal for getting other people to co-operate with you.

This then is the paradox of the unmanaged team: everyone wants to be in one but it is difficult for people to get together to form one. The resolution though, is through everyone involved being able to adopt a suitable communication strategy. In this way, win-win situations and unmanaged groups will form spontaneously.