Groups

TPW, a very intelligent friend of mine, has wide ranging interests. One area to which he often returns in his recreational reading could be termed "primate psycho-biology". Even though I've not read nearly as much on the subject as TPW, I have stumbled across a few concepts that apply to management. They explain so much about behaviors we see in the workplace. Humans are, after all, primates.

Now, primates form groups. This seems to be a basic behavior. Perhaps we are programmed at the DNA level to form groups. It is not difficult to visualize roles the group could have in the selection (or de-selection) of traits. After all, banishment from the tribe practically guarantees that one's genetic material is not passed to subsequent generations. Thus, the psychological drive towards membership in a tribe or group is very strong.

One important part of a manager's job is to direct the formation and maintenance of groups that benefit the enterprise: We, the employees of this company, are a special group -- The Tribe. We must prevail. Our competitors are other tribes. The herds, the land, the business environment cannot support us all. They must not prevail. Our survival depends on it.

A difficulty with all this is that the primate group formation drive is constantly active. Also, we tend to form hierarchies of groups: our family, our community, our region, our country... So we may subscribe to the notion of the enterprise as a group, but without careful guidance from our managers, we'll also form local, atomic groups that center around our individual work teams and closest co-workers. So the QA department has a group identity that is distinct from that of the Technical Writing Team. Both of these identities are distinct from Marketing or Development.

Through inattention, careless managers, may allow local group identities to impair cooperation and flows of information between teams. Ambitious managers may exploit group identities as part of a strategy of self-promotion. In either case, the enterprise is harmed.

Wise managers, managers who truly care about the health of the enterprise, will accept their teams' local identities while consistently channeling those identities in constructive directions. Wise managers will always refer to other teams respectfully. Wise managers will encourage cooperation and mutual support among teams and, most importantly, will visibly embody that cooperation in their public dealings with their own peers. Privately, managers may argue and negotiate. They should test assumptions and plans rigorously and strive to develop the strongest strategies. Publicly, however, managers must themselves be active members of their own group, their own team.

So we use the basic, group forming drive to establish a work identity that is comfortable for our employees and healthy for the enterprise. We discourage group behaviors that are unhelpful. This is not so hard, but it does require conscious behavior on our parts.