Human Resources 101

Ed Kohler riffs off something Steve Rubel posted to Twitter and asks the question, “Are Sports Metaphors Appropriate for Business?” Ed lists some examples of when the sports metaphor falls flat and the importance of matching the metaphor to the audience.

My biggest problem with sports metaphors is the concept of team in the workplace. It’s not that I think the idea of team is inherently bad, but rather, it is a weak metaphor.

When I look at teams in the sporting world, it strikes me that teams are more about losing than about winning. The NHL has 30 teams; one wins the Stanley Cup, 29 lose. Major League Baseball has 29 teams; one World Series winner, 28 has beens. The only teams that can experience broad success are those that cross a number of sporting disciplines: such as a country’s Olympic team.

I work with a manager who lives and breathes team. His staff have team meetings and team jackets. They go on team retreats where staff are forced to endure team building exercises. The manager is highly competitive and his department performs consistently well. However, he has the highest staff turnover rate of any of our managers. His employees get tired of the constant pressure to fit the team concept.

I would replace the team metaphor with one of community. There are a number of ways where community works is a better metaphor:

• It’s cross-cultural
• It supports both group and individual endeavour
• It is consensus driven
• It provides common infrastructure
• It is adaptive
• It encourages the highly competitive
• It nurtures and protects the weak
• It rewards effort as well as accomplishment
• and much more

Over the next little while, I’ll post some expanded thoughts on these and other points, and why I think community is a better workplace metaphor.