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The essence of teamwork is more than structure, political savvy, or talented people. Here's a probe into teamwork's mysterious fourth dimension,

its symbolic and ritualistic framework.

What Makes a Team Work?

LEE G. BOLMAN TERRENCE E. DEAL

W hat enables a group to push towardpeak performance over an extended period of time? We hear so much about team- work. But what makes a team work?

Every answer to this question (and there are plenty) comes with "guaranteed results" printed on its package. But reliable answers remain as elusive as a sure-fire diet for losing weight. Low-performing teams dash from fad to elixir to frustration and disappointment, and quick-fix recipes continue to substitute for deeper change in our time-honored ways of thinking about the essence of teamwork.

Teams play a vital role in the American tradition. For their participants, bowling teams, soccer teams, baseball teams, comman- do teams, and fund-raising teams absorb en- ergy and provide an outlet for competitive spirit. For spectators, athletic teams provide drama, exhilaration, and a common cultural focal point. Teams also play an increasingly important role in the American corporation. Leadership teams, quality teams, design teams, and other forms of teamwork are re- placing the individualistic Lone Ranger, I'll- do-my-job-myself-thank-you attitude that has crippled America's ability to compete in the global market place.

Much of the work in large organizations is now done in small groups or teams. When

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those teams work badly, as they often do, they can block even the most talented indi- viduals from realizing their potential. When they work well, they can elevate the perfor- mance of ordinary mortals to extraordinary heights. The athletic world is full of stories of underdog teams winning a championship against a collection of individuals who were better players, but not a better team.

Although the corporate world relies more and more on teamwork, it often does so with- out a solid grasp of what makes a team work. The prescriptions and theories that abound in the management literature often miss the deeper secrets of how effective teams or groups reach the special state of peak perfor- mance. Former Visa CEO Dee Hock captured the heart of the issue: "In the field of group endeavor, you will see incredible events in which the group performs far beyond the sum of its individual talents. It happens in the symphony, in the ballet, in the theater, in sports, and equally in business. It is easy to recognize and impossible to define. It is a mystique. It cannot be achieved without im- mense effort, training, and cooperation. But effort, training, and cooperation alone rarely create it" (Quoted in Len Schlesinger, Bob Ec- cles, and Jack Gabarro, Managerial Behavior in Organizations, McGraw-Hill, 1983).

Is peak perfonnance simply a great mys- tery—beautiful when it happens, but no more predictable or controllable than the next earthquake in California? In this article we atterript to delve more deeply into the ori- gins of magic by analyzing a well-document- ed case of a team that did achieve a state of transcendence. Tracy Kidder, in The Soul of a New Machine (Little, Brown and Company, 1981), provides a dazzling account of a small group of Data General engineers who creat- ed a new 32-bit computer in record time in the 1970s. Despite scant resources and limit- ed support, the "Eagle Group" outpierformed all other Data General Divisions to produce a new, state-of-the-art computer. Why was this group so successful? What can other teams learn from the group's experience? The an- swer can be found in the way the Eagle Group's leadership "framed" the situation at hand.

Modern organizations are full of ambi- guity, complexity, turbulence, and confusion. These conditions create dilemmas for hu- mans, who are inevitably stuck with biologi- cal limits in memory and information pro- cessing. Too much is happening too fast for managers to attend to everything. They are forced to simplify. They do this b)? filtering and interpreting their experience in the light of cognitive maps, or frames, that they have developed through education and experi- ence. When frames are off-target or too sim- ple, they distort and mislead. But frames that are too complex overwhelm our capacity to think clearly, thus making things even more confusing and oveirwhelming.

A manageable number of frames, each offering a window on different spheres of so- cial complexity, provides a way out of the dilemma. The ability to use multiple frames has three advantages: (a) each frame can be coherenty parsimonious, and powerful; (b) the collection can be more comprehensive than any single frame; and (c) multiple frames eriable leaders to reframe. Reframing is a conscious effort to size up a situation us- ing multiple lenses. Leaders who cannot re- frame in times of crisis and overload feel con- fused and overwhelmed. Sometimes they

are immobilized; other times, they plunge mindlessly into reckless and misguided ac- tion. In both the management literature and the minds of practicing managers, we have found four distinctive frames, or perspec- tives, in common use. The structural frame emphasizes rationality, efficiency, planning, and policies. Structural leaders value analy- sis and data, keep their eye on the bottom line, set clear directions, and hold people ac- countable for results. They try to solve orga- nizational problems by developing new policies and procedures—or through re- structuring. A second perspective, the human resource frame, focuses on the interaction be- tween individual and organizational needs. Human resource leaders value relationships and feelings and seek to lead through facili- tation and empowerment. When problems arise, they are likely to favor remedies like participation and training.

The political frame emphasizes conflict among different groups and interests for scarce resources. Political leaders are advo- cates and negotiators who spend much of their time networking, creating coalitions, building a power base, and negotiating com- promises. They see conflict as a source of en- ergy rather than a cause for alarm. The sym- bolic frame sees a chaotic world in which meaning and predictability are socially con- structed, and facts are interpretative rather than objective. Symbolic leaders pay diligent attention to myth, ritual, ceremony, stories, and other symbolic forms. When things go wrong, they try to articulate a new story or re- visit cherished values.

All four frames are important, because each captures a critical slice of organizational reality. An examination of the literature on ef- fective groups shows that each frame has something to contribute. In the 1960s and 1970s, authors such as Douglas McGregor, Rensis Likert, and Chris Argyris offered a se- ries of prescriptions for effective teamwork that focused on the human side of groups. They suggested that effective teams had such characteristics as clear goals, open communi- cation, shared leadership, and a comfortable, informal atmosphere.

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Lee G. Bolman is lecturer on education and director of the National Center for Educational Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is widely recognized as a specialist in leadership and organizational behavior; his publications in this field include Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Ctioice and Leadership (1991). Bol- man has been a consultant to corporations, public agencies, universities, and public schools in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He has also served as educational chairperson of two executive development programs at Harvard: the Institute for Educational Management and the Management Development Program. He has been director and board chair of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society and director ot the National Training Laboratories Institute for Applied Behavior Science.

More recently, Richard Hackman and his colleagues surveyed groups and teams in a wide range of industries and organizations {Groups That Work—and Those That Don't, Jossey-Bass, 1990). They found both structural and human resource variables that were criti- cal to group effectiveness. Groups with a clear charge and clear deadlines did much better than those without. A common redpe for fail- ure was to burden a group with a vague pur- pose, squishy deadlines, and fuzzy success cri- teria, and then instruct the team to "work out the specifics." Other groups were crippled from the start because they lacked critical re- sources. Sometimes the absence of individuals with key expertise or critical organizational linkages became the sticking point. Other times, the group's authority and mandate were unclear or insufficient. ?lackman and his col- leagues also found that history made a big dif- ference. Groups that started well and achieved some early wins often triggered a self-sustain- ing upward spiral in performance. Groups that got off on the wrong foot often fell into a nega- tive performance rut; their efforts to dig them- selves out put them deeper in the mud.

All of this important and heipful work still misses key elements in teamwork. It attends very little to issues of power and conflict that often block groups from performing at high levels. F.ven more notably, it rarely touches on the symbolic elements of flow, spirit, and magic that are at the core of extraordinary per- formance. As managers seek to get teams working better, the political and symbolic is- sues are the ones that most often trip them up and frustrate their efforts. Our own research shows that managers in both the public and private sectors tend to over rely on the struc- tural and human resource perspectives, wlVile underusing political and symbolic lenses. Such patterns of thinking often help them to be better managers, but not better leaders. In our studies, the structural frame is most often linked to effectiveness as a manager, but the symbolic frame is the best predictor of effec- tive leadership. Because pr,Ticticing managers so often think like managers, not like leaders, it is no surprise that many contemporary teams are overmanaged but underfed.

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Symbolic thinking is subtle and complex; it rests much more on intuition and artistry than on analysis and linear thinking. For this reason, it is often puzzling, elusive, or mysteri- ous for practicing managers. But it gets to the heart of issues of meaning and faith that none of the other perspectives captures. If managers were to rely solely on the human resource, structural, or political frames to explain the Ea- gle Group's success, they would likely gener- ate explanations like the following:

1. Human relations: Perhaps this was a group of highly talented individ- uals who developed high motivation through operating in an open, partici- pative, and trusting context.

2. Incentives: Maybe the group was motivated by the promise of tangi- ble rewards and recoginition.

3. Structure: Perhaps the group's secret was that it had explicit goals, well-developed control systems, and clear job descriptions.

4. Competition: Maybe the gToup was motivated by the desire to win in a highly competitive environment.

None of these explanations really fits the case. Were the individuals of the Eagle project extraordinarily talented? Not really. VNHiile each was highly skilled, none was significantly bet- ter than engineers in other Data General pro- jects. Were team members always treated with dignity and respect? Quite the contrary. One engineer rioted that no one ever patted anyone on the back. Instead, the group experienced what they called mushroom management: "Put 'em in the dark, feed 'em s—, and watch 'em grow" {The Soul of a New Machine, p . 109).

Were financial rewards a motivating fac- tor? Group members said explicitly that they did not work for money. Nor, apparently, were they motivated by fame. The company rewarded their heroic efforts with neither for- mal a:ppreciation nor official applause. In fact, most members of the team later moved un- recognized to other parts of Data General—or to other companies. The group quietly dis- solved shortly after the new computer was an- nounced and shipped.

Terrence (Terry) E. Deal received his Pii.D. in educational administration and so- ciology from Stanford University. As pro- fessor of education and human develop- ment at Peabody College ot Vanderbilt University, Terry teaches courses in organi- zational theory and behavior, symbolism, and leadership. He serves as co-director of the National Center for Educational Leader- ship (NCEL), and senior research associate at the Center for the Advanced Study of Ed- ucational Leadership (CASEL). Terry previ- ously taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Stanford School of Education.

Professor Deal specializes in the study of organizations. He offers consulting ser- vices fo a wide variety of organizations in the United States and abroad. These in- clude businesses, hospitals, banks, schools, colleges, religious orders, military organizations, and others.

Terry has written several books and numerous articles, covering such organiza- tional issues such as change, culture man- agement, reform, symbolism, theater, and theory. His most recent book, co-authored with Lee Bolman, is Reframing Organiza- tions: Artistry, Choice, and Leaderstiip (Jossey-Bass, 1991). in this book, the au- thors expand upon ideas introduced in their widely-acclaimed Modern Approaches to Understanding and Managing Organiza- tions (Jossey-Bass, 1984).

Joining a team involves more than making a rational decision. It is a mutual choice that is marked by some special form, of ritual.

Perhaps the group's formal structure ac- counted for its success. Were they pursuing well-defined and laudable goals? The group leader, Dan West, offered the precept that "not everything worth doing is worth doing well." Did the group have an especially clear and well-coordinated set of roles and rela- tionships? According to Kidder, it kept no charts, graphs, or organization tables that meant anything. As one group member ob- served, "The whole management structure— anyone at the Harvard Business School would have barfed" (p. 116).

Perhaps competitive spirit and a passion for winning lay behind the group's phenome- nal performance. They were motivated more by power than by money: "There's a big high in here somewhere for me that I don't fully un- derstand .. . some of it's a new power trip.... The reason I work is because I win" (p. 179). They were encouraged to circumvent the for- mal structure to advance the group's interests: Explicit norms suggested that if you could not get what you wanted from a peer in another department, you could go directly to that per- son's boss. Group members were also unusu- ally direct and confrontational:

Feeling sorely provoked. Peck one day said to this engineer, "You're an asshole." Ordered by his boss to apolo- gize. Peck went to the man he had in- sulted, acting sheepish and said, "I'm sorry you're an asshole" (p. 224).

The group was highly competitive with one another and with others in the compa- ny. One example was the "tube wars." Als- ing, the head of the Microkids, came back to lunch one day and went to work at his com-

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puter terminal, only to find that all of his files had been turned into empty shells; the names were there, but the contents had van- ished. It took him an hour to find the real files, which had been hidden elsewhere. Als- ing counterattacked by creating an encrypt- ed file and telling the team, "There's erotic writing in there and if you can find it, you can read it" (p. 107).

Here we begin to encounter the real se- crets of the Eagle Group's success. The "tube wars"—and other exchanges among individ- ual members—were more than power strug- gles. They were a form of play that released tensions, created bonds, and contributed to team spirit. A shared and cohesive culture, rather than a clear structure, was the real in- visible force that gave the team its drive. Con- trol was everywhere and nowhere, an elusive quality that passed from hand to hand down the hierarchy of the group so that everyone got some.

Erom the Eagle Group's experience we can distill several important symbolic tenets that can contribute to any team's (or organi- zation's) success:

^ * How someone becomes a team MM member is important. Joining a team involves more than making a rational decision. It is a mutual choice that is marked by some special form of ritual. In the Eagle Group, the decision to become a mem- ber was called signing up. In interviewing po- tential members, Alsing went out of his way to emphasize that the task was virtually im- possible and that the candidate's chances of being accepted were minimal because the standards were so high. The message to the

recruits was that they would be signing on to climb Mount Everest without a rope, and that it would be almost impossible to keep up with the other world-class climbers in the party. When the new recruits protested that they wanted to climb Mount Everest anyway, Als- ing told them they would have to wait to find out if they were good enough. In Alsing's view, the exercise was "kind of like recruiting for a suicide mission. You're gonna die, but you're gonna die in glory" (p. 66).

This was the ritual of signing up. Through the symbolic activity, each engineer became a part of a special effort and agreed to forsake family, friends, and health to accom- plish the impossible. Signing up was a sacred declaration: "I want to do this job and I'll give it my heart and soul."

| H Diversity gives a team a competitive £ 3 advantage. While nearly all the group's members were trained as engineers, each had a unique talent and style. Tom West, the group's leader, was by reputation a hig;hly talented technical de- bugger. He was also aloof and unapproach- able^the Prince of Darloiess. Wallach, the group's computer architect, was a creative maverick. Before accepting West's invitation to join the group, he went to de Castro, the pres- ident of Data General, and asked him, "Okay, what the f— do you want?" De Castro re- sponded, "I want a thirty-two-bit Eclipse" (p. 75). After being reassured that de Caslio would leave them alone and let them do the job, Wal- lach signed up. His love of literature, stories, and verse provided a literary substructure for the technical architecture of the new machine.

AJsing, the group's microcode expert, was as warm and approachable as Tom West was cold and remote. He headed the Microkids, the group of young enj^neers who programmed the new machine. Rasala, Alsing's counterpart, headed the Hardy Boys, the group's hardware design team. In contrast to Alsing's creative prolificacy, Rasala was a solid, hyperactive, risk-taking, technical, and detail-oriented me- chanic. "I may not be the smartest designer in the world, a GPU giant, but I'm dumb enough to stick with it to the end" (p. 142).

Diversity among the group's top engi- neers was institutionalized in specialized team roles. West buffered the team from up- per management interference and served as a group "devil." Wallach created the original design. Alsing and the Microkids created the language that was needed to fuse the com- puter with the programs and tell it what to do. Rasala and the Hardy Boys built the ma- chine's circuitry. Understandably, there was tension among these diverse individuals and subcultures. Harnessing the resulting energy galvanized the different parts into a worldng team. One engineer, for example, was viewed as a creative genius who liked to invent an es- oteric idea and then try to make it work. An- other was a craftsman who enjoyed fixing things, working tirelessly until the last bug had been tracked down and eliminated.

^ ^ Example rather than command ^m holds a team together. The customary elements of command and control were conspicuously absent. Wal- lach's design provided a degree of planned coordination among Eagle's autonomous in- dividuals and groups, but very little was ac- complished through rules. (The group had some rules, but paid little attention to them.) De Castro, Data General's CEO, was viewed as a distant God. He was never there physi- cally, but his presence was always felt. West, the group's official leader, rarely interfered with the actual work, nor was he highly vis- ible in the laboratory. One Sunday morning in January, however, when the team was supposed to be resting, a Hardy Boy hap- pened to come by the lab and found West sit- ting in front of one of the prototypes. The next Sunday, West wasn't in the lab, and sf- ter that they rarely saw him there. For a long time he did not even hint that he might again put his own hands inside the machine.

West was a troublemaker. His contribu- tion to the project was causing problems for the engineers to solve and making mundane events and issues appear to be special. He cre- ated an almost endiless series of "brushfires" so that he could inspire his staff with the chal- lenge of putting them out. He had a geriius

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for finding drama and romance in the group's everyday routines.

The other members of the group's formal leadership followed de Castro and West in creating ambiguity, encouraging inventive- ness, and leading by example. Heroes of the moment provided inspiration and direction. Subtle and implicit signals rather than con- crete and explicit guidelines or decisions held the group together and directed it toward a common quest.

^ ^ A specialized language fosters MM. cohesion and commitment. Every team develops words, phrases, and metaphors unique to its circumstances. A spe- cialized language both reflects and shapes a team's culture. It allows team members to communicate easily, with minimal misunder- standings. To the members of the Eagle Group, for example, a kludge was something to be avoided—perhaps a machine with loose wire held together with adhesive tape. A ca- nard was anything false. Fundamentals were the source of enlightening thinking. The word realistically typically prefaced fUghts of fantasy. "Give me a core dump" meant tell me your thoughts. A stack overfloio meant that an engineer's memory compartments were too full; a one-stack-dcep mind indicated shallow thinking. "Eagle" provided a label for the pro- ject, while "Hardy Boys" and "Microkids" gave identity to the major sub-groups. The two prototype computers were named "Woodst:ock" and "Trixie."

A shared language bonds a team togeth- er, sets the group aparl from outsiders, and reinforces unique values and beliefs. Asked about tilt! Eagle Group's headquarters. West

observed, "It's like a cattle yard." Pressed for an explanation, he remarked, "Mmmmmm .. .the language is different" (p. 50).

^ S Stories cany history and values, s J while reinforcing team identity. In most high-performing organizations and teams, stories keep traditions alive and pro- vide real-life examples to guide everyday be- havior. The group's lore extended and rein- forced the subtle and powerful influence of Eagle's leaders—some of them distant and re- mote. Tom West's reputation as a "trouble- maker" and "excitement-junkie" was con- veyed through legends from the computer wars of the mid-1970s. Alsing said of West that he was always prepared and never raised his voice, but always conveyed intensity and the conviction that he knew the v/ay out of whatever storm was currently battering the group. West also had the skills of the manag- er as politician. He knew how to develop agendas, build alliances, and negotiate with potential supporters or opponents. When he had a particular objective in mind, he would first go upstairs to get senior executives signed on. Then he went around to people one at a time, telling them that the bosses liked the idea and asking them to come on board. "They say, 'Ahhh, it sounds like you're just gonna put a bag on the side of the Eclipse,' and Tom'l! ,givc 'em his little grm and say, 'It's more than that, we're reaily gonna build this f—er and it's gonna be fast as greased lightning.' He tells tliem, 'We're gonna do it by April.' (p. 44),"

Stories of persistence, irreverence, and creativity created an atmosphere encouraging others to go beyond themselves, adding

A shared language bonds a team together and serves as a visible sign of membership. It sets a group apart from^ outsiders and reinforces unique values and beliefs.

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exploits and tales to the Eagle's lore. For ex- ample, as the group neared completion, a de- bugging problem threatened the entire pro- ject. Veres, one of the engineers, worked day and night, with others, to locate the error. Holberger, one of the Hardy Boys, drove to work early one morning, pondering all the problems of tlie project and wondering if they would ever finish it. He was awakened from his reverie by the unexpected scene that greeted him when he entered the lab:

He shows it by smiling wryly. A great heap of paper Ues on the floor, a continuous sheet of computer paper streaming out of the carriage at [the] system console. Stretched out, the sheet would run across the rooni and back again several times. You could fit a fairi5̂ detailed description of Ameri- can history on it. Veres sits in the lxddst of this chaos, the picture of the scholar. He's examined it all. He turns to Hol- berger. "I found it," he says (p. 207).

^M Hunjor and play reduce tension *M and fincoxirage creativity. Work groups often focus single-mindedly on the task ait hand, discouraging any unrelated activity. Seriousness replaces godliness as a desired virtue. Effective teams, on the other hand, balance seriousness with play and hu- mor. Surgical teams, cockpit crews, and other groups learn that joking and playful banter are an essential source of invention and group spirit. Humor releases tension and resolves is- sues that arise from day-to-day routine or in a prevailing emergency. Among the members of the Eagle project, play was an essential part of group life.

When Alsing vi/anted the Microkids to learn how to manipulate Trixie (the comput- er), he made up a game. As the Microkids ar- rived, he told each of them to figure how to write a certain kind of program in Trixie's as- sembly language. The program had to fetch and print; out the contents of a certain file, stored inside the computer. The Microkids went to work, learned their way around the computer, and felt great satisfaction until Als- ing's perverse sense of humor tripped them

up at the end of the hunt. When they finally located the elusive file, they were greeted with a message that access was denied.

Through the resulting play, the Mi- crokids learned to use the computer, coa- lesced into a team, and lecirned to negotiate their new technical environment. They also learned that they had a playful leader who cared about creativity.

Humor threaded itself throughout the group's formidable struggle, often stretdiing the boundaries of good taste. But that too vi,'as part of the team's identity. Throughout the year and a half it took to build the new ma- chine, engineers of the Eagle Project learned to rely on play and humor as a source of re- laxation, stimulation, enlightenment, and spiritual renewal.

^ S Ritual and ceremony renew spirit H I and reinforce values. Ritual and ceremony are expressive activi- ties. As parentheses in an ordinary work dciy, each brackets a special form of human be- havior. What transpires on the surface of such activities is not as important as the deeper communication underneath. Ritual and ceremon3^ provide opportunities for re- inforcing values, revitalizing spirit, and bonding individuals to the team and to one another. Much of what happened in the Ea- gle Group challenges our stereotypical cion- cept of the engineer—a narrowly taskrfo- cused individual who has little time for anything nonrational. The Eagle Group kept a constant eye on symbolic activity, and its leadership encouraged ritual and ceremony from the project's beginning.

Rasala, head of the Hardy Boys, estab- lished a rule requiring that changes in the boards of the prototype be updated each morning. This activity provided a formal mechanism for coordination, but was alscj an occasion for informal communication, ban- tering, and gaining a sense of the whole. The engineers disliked the daily procedure,! so Rasala changed it to once a week—on Satiur- day. He made it a point to always be there himself for the updating. He wanted his en- gineers to take an interest in the entire ccim-

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puter, not just in the parts they had de- signed. He was convinced that only a group of engineers with a sense of the whole could ever get Eagle out the door on time. He wanted the Hardy Boys to be a team, and he was contemptuous of engineers who were reluctant to work on boards that someone else had designed, who felt comfortable only when working on their own.

Eagle's leaders met regularly, including a meeting every Friday afternoon in West's of- fice. But their meetings dealt more with sym- bols, gossip, and play than substance and de- cisions. "'We could be in a lot of trouble here,' West might say, referring to some current problem. And Wallach or Rasala would reply, 'You mean you could be in a lot of trouble, right, Tom?'" (p. 132). Friday afternoon was a traditional time, for winding down and relax- ing. Honoring such a tradition was all the more important for a group whose members often worked all week and then ail weekend.

/\t Alsing's urging. West made himself available to anyone who wished to talk infor- mally to him. Near the end of the work da)', before hurrying home to his farmhouse. West would lean back in his chair with his office door open and entertain any visitor.

In addition to the recurring rituals, the Eagle Group held periodic ceremonies to raise spirits, provide individual recognition, and reinforce a common purpose and direction. Toward the end of the project, ceremonies provided a burst of rersewcd energy for the fi- nal push. The values of creativity, hard work, and teamwork are clearly evident in such fes- tivities. Eor example, after the Microkids cre- ated "Honorary Microcoder Awards," the Hardy Boys responded by creating ['AL awards. In a gathering at a local watering hole, the Cain Ridge Saloon, the first PAL was awarded to Rosemarie Scale, the group's sec- retary. She was commended for contributioiis above and beyond the call of duty and given a framed certificate, complete with an empty PAL chip socket glued in the center. At an- other gathering, one usually dedicated engi- neer was the first recipient of the All-Nightcr Award, consisting of a certificate creatively in- serted under the clear plastic coating of an in-

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sulated coffee cup. Near the project's conclu- sion, all of the engineers' wives were given EAGLE (Eclipse Appreciation and Gratitude for Lonely Evening) Awards. Alsing, the pri- mary instigator and organizer of the parties, commented, "We congratulated ourselves on finishing Eagle and then we went back and finished it" (p. 251).

| 5 1 Informal cultural players make contribu- I M tions disproportionate to their formal roles. Beyond organizing ceremonies, Alsing was also the Eagle's conscience and almost ev- eryone's confidant. While in college, Alsing had originally planned to become a psychol- ogist. Even though he abandoned psycholo- gy as a career, he retained it as an avocation and served as a combination therapist and social director for his team, and even for the Eclipse group. Those who reported to him sometimes complained about his tendency to go around them and talk directly to their people. Still, everyone valued his accessibili- ty and the fact that they felt comfortable talk- ing to him.

Every team needs a "priest"—a pastor who ministers to spiritual needs, informally, these spiritual leaders take confession, give blessings, maintain traditions, and intercede in matters of gravest importance. Alsing did all these and, like a tribal priest, was both a counterpart and interpreter of the chief's in- tentions. Early on. West sometimes warned Alsing against getting too close to his people, but Alsing paid little attention and West final- ly gave up and let him be himself.

Rosemarie Seale's duties also expanded well beyond those of a typical secretary. If Alsing Wcis the priest, she was tht- mother su- perior. She did all the usual secretarial chores—answering the phones, preparing documents, and working out budgets. But she found particular joy in the many oppor- tunities to solve minor crises—which arose al- most every day—and to serve as a kinc t)t den mother lor the members of the Eagle team. When now members came on, it was Rose- marie Scale who worried about finding them n desk and some pencils. When paychecks went astray, she would track them down and

get them to their intended recipients. She liked the job, she said, because she felt that she was doing something important.

In any group, a network of informal players deals with human issues outside for- mal channels. In the Eagle project, the es- sential efforts of these out-of-channel opera- tors were encouraged, appreciated, and rewarded.

SOUL AS THE REAL SECRET OF A TEAM'S SUCCESS

The symbolic side of the Eagle Group was its real secret. Its soul, or culture, created a new machine. All of the members of the Eagle Group put something of themselves into the new computer. Individual efforts went well beyond a formal "job." The team's efforts were supported by a "w ay of life" that encouraged each person to commit himself to doing some- thing of significance. Their commitment was elicited through the ritual of signing up, and then maintained and accentuated by shared diversity, exemplary leadership, a common language, stories, rituals, ceremonies, play, hu- mor, and a network of cultural players. In the best sense of the word, the Eagle Group was a real team, their efforts knitted together by a co- hesive culture. Symbolic elements were at the heart of the group's success.

The experience of the Eagle Group is not unusual. After extensive research on high- performing groups, Peter Vaill concluded that spirit was at the core of every such group he studied. The members of such groups con- sistently "felt the Spirit," and the feeling of spirit was essential to the meaning and value of tliie group's work. More organizations now realize that culture, soul, and spirit are the wellsprings of high performance. The U.S. Air Force, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, embarked on a vigorous effort to reaffirm tra- dition and. rebuild its culture. The phrase "Co- hesion is a Principle of War" was added to the list of core values. Project Warrior brought heroes— l̂iving and dead—forward as visible examples of the "right stuff." Rituals were re- vitalized and reinforced. Consider, for exam-

ple, the "re-blueing" ceremony held annually to encourage recommitment to Air Force val- ues. The same attention to spirit and tradition is regularly found in legendary athletic teams such as the Boston Celtics, whose tradition of "Celtics pride" helps the team sustain one of the most extraordinary winning records in professional sports.

Many organizations have found that s3/m- bolic glue is central to business success. Facing intense foreign competition and severe prob- lems of profitability. Ford Motor Company in the 1980s built a new culture around the prin- ciple that "Quality is job one." They were able to out-earn General Motors for the first time in sixty years. Jan Carlzon revitalized the culture of Scandinavian Air System around the pre- cepts that every encounter between a cus- tomer and an SAS employee was a "moment of truth" and that SAS "flies people, not planes." Mitsubishi Corporation, with over 25,000 prod- ucts ranging from "noodles to space satellites," used an elaborate entrance ceremony for new hires as part of its effort to reinforce a corporate culture stressing professionalism, cooperation, and entrepreneurship.

CONCLUSION

Symbolic perspectives challenge traditional views that building a team is mainly a prob- lem of finding the right people, designing an appropriate structure, or negotiating politi- cal agreements. The essence of high perfor- mance is spirit. If we try to banish play, ritu- al, ceremony, and myth, we will destroy teamwork, not enhance it. Symbolic activi- ties can be functional as well as expressive because of their ability to provide internal meaning and promote external faith and confidence.

In its own way, each framework (stiriac- tural, human resource, or political) champi- ons a bounded rationality. Structural viiews stress the deterministic forces of goals land technologies. The human resource frairtie- work calls attention to enduring hutoan needs and motives. Polifical views emphasize the inescapable forces of scarce resources and

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intransigent interests. Each of those perspec- tives is valid and important; we ignore any of them at our peril.

But the signs are everywhere that late- 20th-century organizations are at a critical juncture because of a crisis of meaning and faith. Managers ask themselves questions like, "How am I supposed to build team spir- it when my people feel underpaid, money is tight, turnover is increasing, and some peo- ple aren't sure they'll even have a job?" Such questions are important, but they are not the only important ones. By themselves, they can limit managerial imagination and divert attention from deeper issues of faith and purpose. Managers are inescapably account- able for budgets and bottom lines. They must also respond to individual needs, legal requirements, and economic pressures. But

they can serve a deeper, more powerful, and more durable function when they recognize that team building at its heart is a spiritual undertaking. It is the creation of a communi- ty of believers, united by shared faith and shared culture. It is a search for the spirit within. Peak performance emerges as a team discovers its soul.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

All quotations from The Soul of a New Machine, © 1981 by John Tracy Kidder, are by permis- sion of Little, Brown and Company. Our arti- cle gives only a glimpse of the many treasures to be found in this book. Readers who have not already read Kidder's full account should dash immediately to the nearest bookstore.

Our view of frames and reframing is de- veloped in our book, Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership 0ossey-Bass, 1992), which provides a more extensive ac- count of the structural, human resource, and political elements in effective teamwork. Bob Quinn's Beyond Rational Management (Jossey- Bass, 1988) also provides provocative discus- sions of reframing and peak performance. Pe- ter Vaill's Managing as a Performing Art

(Jossey-Bass, 1989) contains a provocative dis- cussion of spirit and high performance. Corpo- rate Culture (Addison-Wesley, 1982), by Terry Deal and Allen Kennedy, discusses many of the cultural dynamics that are at the heart of high performance. A different perspective on some of the same issues appears in Ed Schein's Organizational Culture and Leadership (Jossey- Bass, 1985).

A review of some of the classic human re- source views of group effectiveness can be found in Glenn Parker's Team Players and Teamwork: The New Competitive Business Strategy (Jossey-Bass, 1990). The important work of Richard Hackman and his colleagues can be found in Croups That Work (and Those That Don't): Creating Conditions for Effective Teamwork (Jossey-Bass, 1990).

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