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…