WHAT MAKES A TEAM WORK

Teams that achieve peak performance operate with a mystique that seems to defy explanation. We can, for example, attempt to explain a given team's success by looking at its structural elements (planning mechanisms, internal policies), or by focusing on its political powers (the team's ability to form networks and coalitions). Perhaps, we say, the secret of teamwork is simply a matter of people-the talent and interpersonal skills of its individual members. Although each of these three ''frameworks'' provides useful and valid insight into teamwork, none gets to the elusive essence of what makes a team work. In this article, Bolman and Deal delve more deeply into the origins of 'team magic'' by examining a team that achieved transcendence over an extended period, as documented in Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine (Little, Brown, and Co., 1981). By analyzing Kidder's record of how engineers at Data General created a breakthrough computer in record time, the authors expose teamwork's fourth dimension-the symbolic framework. For the Eagle Group at Data General, the symbolic actions involved such elements as initiation rites, an off-beat sense of humor that crossed the lines of good taste, a 'specialized language' unique to the team, meetings that took on a ceremonial tone, and individual-almost tribal-roles for some of the players. These elements, say the authors gave the team its soul.