E-M8 Entrepreneurial Management for Eternal Mission

Today I was reading a 1960s satire by Marty Larny from Finland and was struck by an interesting dialog that seemed to resonate with me.

Minister of Interior: He is a team player.

President: So, in other words this man is incapable of original thought.

Now, mind you I have no problems with people who get a long with others and can work with others, but it seems to me that for once in his writing career Larny has succinctly described a phenomenon that seems to plague our corporate world. There are very few job ads these days, but even the ones that remain seem to all say the same thing. They are looking for this mythical creature: “Self-starter, team player” ~ which translated in plain speak means “our management is incapable of managing, so you’ll have to come up with something to keep yourself occupied and out of sight; we don’t want to hear any gaff or questioning of the management in the process”

The scary part is that many corporations are succeeding in breeding precisely this kind of a worker. Unquestioning, uninterested, uncaring person who makes no waves. It is unfortunate that by such a seemingly good phrase “team player” we mean a person who is incapable of original thought. It’s more unfortunate that writers were making fun of the concept 50 years ago, and yet today the thought is just as accurate.

Not that I don’t believe in teams, I just think team player is an overused and maligned concept that is too amorphous to be meaningful outside the context of the dialog recited above. Hopefully, you are a team player enough that I did not offend your sensibilities.

The rest of the book is rubbish, which makes it