Team Quotes

“It is tempting to attribute an unhealthy work environment to some nefarious driving force—someone, or some group, usually at the top—actively planning a negative experience for employees. But in our experience, it is just what happens when not enough attention is paid to the structure and culture in which individuals come to work each day. It isn’t that the people at the top are bad people, or have bad intentions. They are typically under more pressure than most, and their way of leading and managing is mostly a reaction to that pressure. So consumed are they by tactical and operational matters that they rarely find time to do the strategic work on structure and culture that would unleash the talent and motivation latent in their organization”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“The constant demand for reactivity has reduced our ability to discern what is truly important and what is simply new and clamoring for a quick response, leaving many worrying about immediate responses to things that have little meaning. Immediate responses are often required because of someone else’s inefficiency and lack of control. Interrupt-itis becomes the order of the day.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“We’re more interested in the people who take care of things in a way that means there will be no crises at all.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“Aspiring leaders are encouraged to choose “leadership” over “management” in some strange hierarchy where management is the poor stepchild. The fact is you don’t get to choose. You must do both.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“This may sound like obvious common sense, and we’re sure there are teams functioning quite well in this regard. However, in our experience most teams could use a more rigorous examination of their members’ roles and associated accountabilities, even in some of the smallest projects and initiatives. “Were you going to handle this, or me?” is unfortunately a rather common fly in the ointment.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“Beyond that they should show up when they agreed to, occasionally generate ideas about possibility, and have some minimal ability to add energy and motivate themselves through difficult patches. Ideally, they bring enough courage to be honest but civil in tough conversations, and a willingness to keep their ego in check in service of the team purpose.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“For example, teams need individuals to bring a degree of self-mastery and, at a minimum, an ability to make, track, and deliver on agreements they commit to.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“Many initiatives try to bring about change in large organizations by intervening at the organizational level, but getting traction there is unbelievably difficult. Those with experience know that genuine culture change in a large organization could take a decade. Not so for teams. Just as soldiers don’t fight for their country but for their foxhole buddies, members of a team will make commitments and changes with and for one another at a speed that would be next to impossible in a larger system.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others

“As one of our colleagues says, “If you work in a tomato canning factory, you know that something’s going wrong if you’ve either got a big pile of tomatoes, a big pile of cans, or something’s on fire. But in an office, somebody having a good day sitting behind the computer looks very similar to someone on a bad day sitting at a computer. And if you don’t have ways of making the work visible then no one knows how you are doing.”
― David Allen, Team: Getting Things Done with Others