---
title: "The ideal team: 11 hard things about it"
author: "Stan Voo"
url: https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/the-ideal-team-11-hard-things-about-it
published: 2009-10-09
summary: "We train new people in orders and invoices and forget to tell them why we work at all. What a team would look like if we didn't forget."
---

# The ideal team: 11 hard things about it

A new employee: first come the operational skills. Orders, calls, invoices, problems with partners, orders again, calls again... Because of all that, we forget what we should be talking about in the first place: why do we work? For whom? What are our goals? How are we going to reach them?

After all, the answers to these questions are, in essence, the very glue that binds a group of people into a team. Without it, people just gather at the same time in the same place and make strange movements. Sometimes someone pays them for it. Sometimes they manage to do something useful at the same time, but rarely... and by pure chance.

So, let me try to picture an ideal team, one that doesn't get paid by chance:

1. They have **no job titles**, but they do have distributed duties. (How that works, I haven't figured out myself yet.)
2. They **help** each other, whether or not it's part of their duties. (Oh, that's probably the explanation for point 1.)
3. All the more so, you never hear **the phrase** "And why should I be the one doing this?"
4. Nobody owes anybody anything: everyone came **of their own free will**.
5. They understand **why they've come** to work and what the absolutely ultimate **goal** of it is. Everything they do serves that goal.
6. They're **honest** (sincere) with each other: they're not afraid to admit their **mistakes** and to point out each other's.
7. Mistakes are made in order to be fixed, not hidden.
8. They know how to learn and how to **teach each other**.
9. To some extent they're even **responsible** for one another.
10. They turn work into **a pleasant pastime**: you can't spend a third of your life without enjoying it, can you?
11. **Their leader is part of their team.**

Right, we've pictured the ideal team. Now off to bed; we have one to build. I suppose we should start at the beginning: with those gluey questions about ends and means.