Title: Working Together or Working Alone - What's More Effective?
Headings: Working Together or Working Alone – What’s More Effective?
Working Together or Working Alone – What’s More Effective?
Contents
The Push for Autonomous Workers
Thoughts on Working Alone
More People Can Mean More Problems
Dealing with an Uneven Playing Field
Thoughts on Working Together
Team Work Develops Important Skills for Your Success
To Work Together or to Work Alone

Content: Issues arise as the group gets larger from things like politics, process, hierarchy (official and non-official), and structure. Working alone, a decision can be made as soon as you say yes or no. As a group, now a decision has to go from person to person to person, each slightly warping it as it moves along in a bad game of “telephone”. Next thing you know, one person doesn’t agree simply because the idea came from a team member that person dislikes. Another person doesn’t agree because they don’t understand the problem. Yet another person also disagrees because they want to do it “their way”. The time needed to clean up this interpersonal teamwork disaster takes away precious time from actually completing work. Due to the team dynamic, progress is often slowed down because so much time and effort is spent either educating other team members or trying to “sell” decisions or best practices to the team. Even once everyone is on the same page, it isn’t uncommon for work to be done poorly by other team members which requires extra time to fix mistakes. Dealing with an Uneven Playing Field
Speaking of mistakes… another problem with working together is that competent team members are often held back by incompetent team members.