Saw this was posted on Facebook by a colleague at work:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
The whole notion of calling out "teamwork" as such a basic value kind of gives me a chill. Goose bumps even...
I can't speak for you, gentle reader, but I can safely say that the absolute worst work I ever did in either my academic or professional careers was in group projects. I can recall exactly two projects in the working world where my entire software team met or exceeded my own and our customer's expectations. The only times I've ever been on "teams" that consistently worked were bands. And that's only happened like 2-3 times in over a dozen bands.
I even remember in school thinking that the best possible outcome of group work was usually mediocrity. The usually random mix of group members and their general engagement levels meant that one or two people in the group would usually take on 85-90% of the work. I see this pattern echoed in virutally every large company I have consulted or contracted for.
Certainly there are needs which can only be served by teamwork. Huge workloads of all kinds require more resources, which can most usefully be coordinated in teams. Another dimension would be skill sets required for the work, which may also need to broken down team-wise. But in terms of a need for teamwork involving more than one mind focused on a single problem (i.e. "brainstorming"), the statistics say that this usually does not result in a better solution. Note the important exception pointed out by the author about collaboration (specifically remote collaboration, as enabled by technology). fostering collaboration between nominally independent individuals seems to have significant worth.
I look at this as the true endgame of the software "collaboration wave" seen in business IT right now. It's easy to dismiss the buzzword, or consider it a forced mandate for "groupthink." But empowering knowledge workers with data, allowing them to build ideas and evolve them into useful business tools -- that is a powerful force that is already working.
