Managers build their plans and strategies on the assumption that people in their firm are ready and willing to be team players, acting collectively to create or achieve something in the future.

The truth, however, is that these attitudes cannot be assumed to exist. In fact, they may even be relatively scarce. In many firms — perhaps even most — these preconditions for strategy may not exist.

It is hard to identify and create buy-in for what “we” (i.e., the firm) should do if there is no strong sense of “we” — a mutual commitment and sense of group loyalty and cohesiveness. Similarly, it can be meaningless if the members of the firm are not committed to go on a journey together into the future.

This was brought home to me when I was facilitating a strategy discussion in an industry that has a long tradition of hiring, celebrating and rewarding stars — individualistic, solo operators. As we discussed the investments and initiatives necessary to pull off the strategy identified by management, one of the ‘players’ in the room asked: “Why would I want to do this. What’s in it for me?”

It must be immediately recognized that having this thought is normal. The industry I was working with is only unusual in the (refreshing?) willingness of people in this business to actually say things like this out loud.

In other industries and professions, they just think it all the time, without actually saying it!

As we worked through the issues, it became increasingly clear that there were major differences among the people in the room, the key players in the company, whose participation and collaboration would be essential to pull off ANY strategy.

The issue was not the specifics of the proposed strategy. What came through clearly was that no commitment to each other — or to their joint future — existed.

The differences among them were based on what seemed to be some inherent personality characteristics, or at least some strongly-held preferences, on two key dimensions — their desire to be engaged in a joint, mutually-dependent enterprise (collaboration) and the time frame they wanted to apply to their decision-making (future-orientation).

On the first dimension, there were people who actively wanted to be part of a team, with joint accountabilities, responsibilities, and rewards. They wanted to be part of something.

However, not everyone in the room fit this category. Many others freely admitted that they were most comfortable (and would seek out) situations where they could be independent — judged on their own individual merits and accomplishments, without being tied to the performance of others.

The second dimension we explored was time-frame. Some people had an appetite for high-investment, future-oriented strategies. They were willing to defer (if necessary) some immediate gratification in order to invest — to get the chance to reap higher rewards in the future. Others are reluctant to invest, even in their own future. They prefer to focus on “winning today,” letting tomorrow take care of itself.

Combining these two dimensions led to the identification of four kinds of preferences that individuals (and companies) have.
• Type 1 is the solo operator who values independence, wants to make little investment in the future, but is willing to bet on his (or her) ability to catch fresh meat each and every day. I call this the Mountain Lion approach. “Pay me for what I do today (or this year.)”
• Type 2 is the individual who prefers to act in coordination with others, but doesn’t like to invest (or defer gratification) too much. I call these people (collectively) the Wolf-Pack. “If we act together we can kill bigger animals, but it had better pay off soon or I’m joining another Pack!”
Types 1 and 2 may be unwilling to invest or “bet on the future” for a variety of reasons, including risk aversion.
• Type 3 is the individual who wants to be independent, but is interested in building for the future by investing time and resources to get somewhere new. Such people remind me of Beavers building dams to provide a home for their (own) family.
• Type 4 are individuals who want to be part of something bigger than they can accomplish alone, and have the patience, the ambition and the will to help the collective organization invest in that future.

I call this group “The Human Race” since one of the rare things about Homo Sapiens that differentiates it (at least in scale) from other species is its ability to act collectively to build and develop. (It’s called civilization.)

Note, however, that Type 4 could also be a description of an Ant Community or Beehive, where individuals slave for the benefit of the community, suppressing and subsuming their own identity within the whole. (This interpretation is most likely to be applied, naturally, by those who do not place themselves in this category.)

On the issue of independence versus team-play, I ask people whether, in general, they would prefer rewards in their organization to be based (compared to the current arrangements) a little more on individual performance or a little more on joint rewards for joint performance. I then ask whether, compared to the current arrangements, people would like their firm to invest more in its future, even if this meant they would have to accept less current income in the form of salaries and current bonuses.
These two (imprecise) questions tend to cause people to reflect on their true preferences. The underlying issue is not really about pay schemes, but phrasing the questions this way tends to crystallize the issues for many people.

In exploring these orientations, I frequently use secret voting machines which allow people to express their views while remaining anonymous.

I ask people in the group which of these four preferences best described their own, personal desired way of behaving. (At this point you may wish to pause and guess what percent of all your colleagues would place themselves, by preference, in each category.)

In this particular company where I first explored the model, all four groups were well represented, although only 10 to 20 percent put themselves in the “I want to be part of something bigger than me that is working to build for the future.”

Thirty to forty percent put themselves in the “solo-short-term” (Mountain Lion) category, with approximately twenty to thirty percent each of the “team-play short term” (Wolf Pack) and “solo builder” (Beaver) categories.

I don’t know if the fact that only 10 to 20 percent of key players wanting to be “team-play builders” strikes you as low, or matches your experience, but it leads to an interesting question: what do you think the chances are of melding people that describe themselves that way into an institution that has a differentiated reputation?

My own conclusion, then and now, is clear. An organization that had these proportions might succeed through individual, entrepreneurial activities, but it would be quite literally incapable of having a company strategy. For example, no common reputation or differentiation could be achieved in the competition either for clients or talent. Firm leaders that tried to develop and implement company strategies would be wasting their time.

In applying this model and conducting these votes numerous times in other firms, it has been revealing how much diversity is exposed among people who had previously thought of themselves of members of, and loyal to, their firm.

They may indeed, be loyal, but their desires and preferences differ so much on the key dimensions that, in many cases, no strategy can accommodate the diversity of preferences among the members of the group.

The mixture of preferences may place very severe limits on what an organization can achieve. While there may be some logic and merit in like-minded people banding together, (whether they be Mountain Lions, Wolves, Beavers or Humans) an organization made up of an unmanaged mix of such types is unlikely to function well.

If a majority of the key people really DON’T want to act collectively in building for the future, it is meaningless to develop plans as if they did.

In spite of this, very few people or organizations have frank and open discussions about this kind of thing. The preconditions for strategy are rarely surfaced and examined, possibly because the implications of discovering a disparity of preferences can be very scary and disruptive.

It is important to note that it is not required that a majority choose the “team-play building” preference.

A group of people who all identify themselves as preferring to operate as “independent short-term” players can succeed in many businesses. (See for example, the discussion of “Hunters and Farmers” in my 1993 book Managing the Professional Service Firm.) Many businesses can be, and are, constructed around “star players” rewarded for their short-term results.

Similarly, a Wolf Pack can achieve something that is called “strategy” and can align its recruiting, systems, rewards around a strategy of collaborative short-term actions, if that’s what everyone wants.

However, without a majority of key players committed to collaboration and investment in the future, it is unlikely that most of what is usually considered to be firm-level strategy can really be accomplished. Before discussing their plans, firms need to uncover whether their people really want to go on a journey — any journey — together.