The Myth Of “Unity Of Purpose”

It doesn’t really exist in work settings, as much as we brand that way.

Saw this tweet recently, and it’s a shame it doesn’t have more RTs, because it’s impossibly and beautifully true about workplaces writ large. Senior leadership teams always claim to be friends — “I’ve known Jim for 20 years, since we were rivals at Black and Decker!” — and in reality they just compete for resources and CEO attention and would stab a knife in each other’s backs pretty quickly, in many cases. (Not all, no.) “Collaboration” is probably one of the most-used words in company mission statments, and in reality collaboration isn’t even that real. If you’ve been in most offices, they can be very heads-down places where people put on headphones and focus on their own specific tasks and pleasing/placating their chain of command. Execs love to talk about “spontaneous interaction,” but that’s very rare in all honesty. (It’s common at some places, but those places are unicorn companies.)

It’s hard for most people to focus deeply on collaboration in times of inflation and recessionary environments, because typically for every “home run” project (where a team knocked it out of the park and drove revenue or client satisfaction), what happens is that 2 out of maybe 10 people get advanced. The other eight go back to their old role and wait for their next chance, which might be in three months or might be in three years. With average rents over $2200 in many urban environments, people are almost naturally competing with their so-called “collaborators” to get more for themselves. And, as we know from many work environments, usually it’s not the best employees who advance — it’s the people best at playing the game and getting themselves close to the existing power core, while essentially sucking up to them or verifying their worth daily.

The idea of “unity of purpose” sounds very good in:

• Mission statements
• Hiring processes
• All-hands meetings
• “About Us” webpages
• Culture videos
• As a justification for in-office work

In reality, “unity of purpose” doesn’t exist in many places. Capitalism has an underlying current of competition (it drives the whole concept at some level), and that definitely exists in workplaces. The real “tea” on collaboration and community at many workplaces is that people don’t have a lot of friends outside of work, so they want work to be their community and friend group (very dangerous), and we all get the narrative twisted around what work even is in our lives. It should be a means to an end, but we pretend it’s virtue and all work matters and work is so important and we define our entire middle ages to this (and potentially raising children). But these places aren’t places of unity. They’re places of some good relationships, some bad ones, some purposeful work and lots of tasks and tedium, and competition rather than collaboration around most corners.

Takes?