Changing a teams culture starts with getting rid of the dickheads

There is this team, lets call them the All Blacks, and they play a sport, lets call it rugby, and they are pretty damn good. Back in 2004 they came to a nexus after getting hammered by a team we will call Springboks. After the defeat they held a kangaroo court, drinks were drank, silly fines were imposed and general stupidity took place. The boys returned to a country we will call Hobbiton and had a 3 day ‘come to Jesus’ moment where the senior players decided that to succeed going forward they needed to have more ownership of the team. They created new guiding principles that included:

Better people make better All Blacks. Leave the jersey in a better place. And most importantly - No Dickheads.

This logic of course seems obvious however, as is the case in most things, sometimes people forget the basic tenets of what it takes to build a team and focus too much on the big picture. Sure, you have to have an overall plan of where you want to go and what you want to do, but if you have a team of dickheads chances are you will not get there and even if you do, well, you're still a dickhead.  As Lily Tomlin once said 'the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.'

Lets delve back into the rugby analogies for a second (and God knows how much I would love to do that for every blog, but at some point people will stop reading). There is a highly effective technique for product development teams called a scrum, apparently they wanted to call it a ruck but that is just rucking stupid. There is a facilitator called a scrum master (another reason for not using the word ruck as ruck master has different connotations) and under their tutelage the scrum is able to self-organize and make changes quickly. I am not a scrum master (I always preferred rucking) however it is my understanding that using this process, just like in a scrum, the entire team has input and all work together.

There is no quicker way of destroying a team effort than by including a dickhead in the group.

Now, the definition of dickhead may vary. I am sure some people reading this will instantly associate a picture of my face when they think dickhead and that is just downright mean :) To me a dickhead is someone who is overly negative, overly self important and just plain obnoxious. Teams are always going to have that someone who is a little louder than others, but as long as the louder ones still give the quieter ones the ability to add to the team then that is not really dickheadism, it is actually good teamwork, when done correctly.

In rowing you have a cox, and he/she is the yelly, shouty annoying little bastard who urges the team on. In rugby you have a halfback and he is generally the yelly, shouty annoying little bastard that urges the forward pack on. A friend of mine, we shall call him Greg, was both the cox for the eight and an excellent halfback as he was an annoying yappy bastard but he was annoying and yappy in a positive way. He was the guy that slapped you on the back to urge you to tackle harder, ruck more and pull harder on the boat. He was not a dickhead, he is not a dickhead, and he was an integral part of the team. Now, the person who decided mid season to have plastic surgery on a birthmark, which then allowed me the pleasure of playing front row against some rather large teams, well he was a dickhead. The guy that broke my nose because I was boring in on him as he was a fuckton bigger than me, he was a bit of a dickhead but he wasn't on my team so tough to truly judge him :)

Let’s step away from rugby for a second.

We just had a team go to a trade show and as a team we work well together (and yes I am on that team, fuckers). We have a yelly shouty annoying bastard (yes that is me), we have the meat up front with Johnny Utah and we have the smooth charm of the English Major. However at any time we can change up positions (well apart from me being the smooth charming one). We know where our teammates are on the field if we need to offload, we have a common objective and we have an agreed upon overall game plan to reach our goal. If I can assist the English Major (and no, he didn’t serve and he is not a warm beer drinker, he just majored in English) with a deal then I do, and vice versa. Sometimes we need to hand off the conversation to Johnny Utah as he is the meat with brains and sometimes we just end up crying with laughter as I talk about my deck. Either way we have built a team, and for us to continue to grow the team we need to be very mindful of who we add.

Not only can you fix a team by getting rid of dickheads, you can really screw one up by adding a dickhead to the mix.

Building a strong team culture is an integral part of success. This applies in business as much as it does in sport. If you are part of a team that is not succeeding because of dickhead moves and you are not sure who the dickhead is, chances are it is probably you :)

As always the thoughts and opinions posted here are 100% mine and not backed up by any factual research whatsoever. Any person living or dead offended by this post needs to be in awe of the dead people offended by this post as that is one hell of a trick by them.  As usual no animals were hurt or mistreated in the writing of this post however I did enjoy a delicious cheeseburger so I guess that animal was hurt earlier :)

So work hard, play hard and earn your inspiration

Happy Poets Day