[Sigia-l] Are you ready for it?

[John O'Donovan]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Richard_Dalton at vanguard.com>

> Wow ... so much negativity towards large organizations and their needs.
> (side question - do/have any of you worked for large organizations?). As
> someone who does work in a large organization where teamwork is very
> important I can confidently say that there is a purpose for the evil "Job
> Title" that has been missed - it can be an effective way of identifying
> roles and responsibilities within a team.
>
> You don't say "the guy who calls the numbers and throws the ball" in
> football do you?
>

I work within a wonderfully monolithic organisation, where
institutionalisation is listed as a "benefit in kind" on my contract.

Team work is important, but if there is no acceptance of the tensions that
develop within teams if you don't allow people flexibility in thier role
based on thier skills then your are locking them down by job title rather
than skillset. I find that this has happened in all the large organisations
I have worked in.

There is too much concern with individual ownership and not enough about
team responsibility. The "cult of the individual" as Bill Buxton described
it. And I won't deny that at times in the past I've probably fallen into
that trap as well but I'm sure I had good reason...:)

You have to remove some of the ego to devlelop a democratic team.

The whole point is that I don't need a job title to tell me my roles and
responsibilities within a project - that should be based on skills not
titles. I still need a job title but that then becomes less limiting in
multi-skilled, multi-disciplinary teams.

Aspirationally, that is what I would like large organisations to understand
and deal with better.

Cheers,

jod