2. A LIST OF IRRITATING THINGS:
AKA TOPICS ABOUT WHICH EXPECT TO HEAR
MORE SOON
• Teamwork presented as self-evidently (a force) for good
• Impious worship at the Altar of Diversity
• Essays that convey nothing more than an applicant’s ambition
– and unfocused ambition at that!
3. SIMPLIFICATION BEYOND RECOGNITION:
TEAMWORK AS GOOD QUA GOOD
• Latin has declined dreadfully since the Moralist’s salad days
• Good qua good simply means: as good in and of itself.
• Which, given the diversity of opinions on the matter
• Agreeing, here: Beautiful Teams
• Ambivalent, here: Team Building: Nuisance or Necessity?
• Disagreeing, here: Harvard Business Review May 2009
• Complicated to Pull Off, here: The Hard Science of Teamwork
• Clearly teamwork as a force for good can’t be the whole story.
4. MORALIST ADVICE:
RE-FRAME THE ISSUE & SHIFT THE TERMS
OF DEBATE
• It’s far more productive to frame teamwork as a tool
• Tools are not inherently good or bad
• After all, tragically, Americans know all too well that guns don’t kill people; people kill people
5. MORALIST ADVICE:
RE-FRAME THE ISSUE & SHIFT THE TERMS
OF DEBATE
• Tools offer benefits to be sure – provided that they are used well
• Which presupposes some kind of a learning or experience curve
• Tools, when not used well, can be painful
• I.e, they have costs that outweigh their benefits, applicable equally to:
• A Hammer (in context of nail, thumb, poor coordination)
• A poorly designed team with:
• Under-resourced systems & processes
• A purpose assigned to it long ago, almost forgotten and certainly never revisited
6. THINK OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
• A knee-jerk reaction from an applicant asserting, in chipper tones, ‘everything is great’
• Someone who can talk about the range of experiences and draw distinctions among causes and
contexts for various levels of results measured
• If you were an admissions officer, whom would you select?
