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It's so hard to find a good team to work with

It was my last day with my current team. I was with this team for one year. 

 ♪♪ Don't cry for me my old team. I will forget you quickly and you will forget me quickly. We are not meant to be each other.

 After coming back from maternity leave, I didn't have much luck finding a good team to join in my current company. I stayed with my previous team for 3 quarters and then I escaped to this team. Now, I'm escaping again. Let me quickly summarize what went wrong with each team.

 Team A (Duration: 3 Quarters)
  1. Too much planning, slow execution: Meeting after meeting after meeting for no execution. Meet for sake of meeting!
  2. Micro-manager (micro-manage design of slide / spreadsheet): This is not my first time to encounter a micro-manager. This one is yet another unique one. F* you, do it yourself.
  3. Gender discrimination: There is a silent agreement that female workers should take care of tasks like taking meeting minutes, organize team event. 
  4. Everyone has its own opinion and never compromise: No body accepts anything other than their own opinion. 
Team B (Duration: 4 Quarters)
  1. Lack of listening: Smart bunch of people who just totally tune out.
  2. Lack of planning, coordination: Project pops up out of blue without any structure.
  3. Lack of investing time to build quality process: Rush, rush, rush to something.
Even though each team has its own weakness but one common theme here is that both teams lacked spirit of team work. I'm escaping again because I don't get a sense of working as a team. At least that's what I think. 

 My friend once shared an interesting article about humans become less self-centered around certain age (25-ish if I recall it correctly). I think it's true. I get less excited to hear compliment of myself (e.g., "you are awesome") these days. I am happier to hear good thing about things I'm working on with my teammates. 

 On the other hand, maybe I simply become less tolerable with people with traits I dislike as I get older. I easily get angry about people's work attitude. Maybe I should start read about workplace anger management type of book if there's any. Any recommendations?

 My engineer friends often say that dealing with computer is more predictable and pleasant than dealing with actual humans. I totally agree. Why can't we start using AI to analyze each employee's personality / work style and create a "right" team? We already have people looking at AI in workforce: hiring, assessing employee's performance and so forth. We should use AI to create an "ideal" team as well - why not! We already do similar things with dating service (to find the right match), right?

 Nevertheless, it's so hard to find a team you love to work with these days. Here's today's featured shopping list:

1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable - The best part of this book was the prologue where it described each unique character in a team. "Dysfunctions" is a lovely term that can be applied to many teams I worked with. 


Enjoy and you are welcome!


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