Is Teamwork Always the Answer? - ACS Publications

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I/EC February 1 9 5 9 , Volume 5 1 , No. 2 APPLIED JOURNALS, ACS 1155 Sixteenth St., N.W. Washington 6, D. C. Director of Publications, C. B. Larrabee Editorial Director, Walter J. Murphy Executive Editor, James M. Crowe Production Manager, Joseph H. Kuney INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY Editor, Will H. Shearon, Jr. EDITORIAL HEADQUARTERS WASHINGTON 6, D. C. 1155 Sixteenth St., N.W. Phone Republic 7-3337 Teletype WA 23 Associate Editors: G. Gladys Gordon, Stella Anderson, Katherine I. Biggs, Melvyn A . Kohudic Assistant Editors: Robert J. Riley, Robert J. Kelley, Ruth M . Howorth, Eugenia Keller, Sue M . Solliday, William H. Gay, Malvina B. Preiss, Ruth Rey­ nard Editorial Assistants: Katherine H. Gin­ nane, James H. Carpenter, Virginia E. Stewart Layout and Production: Melvin D. Buck­ ner (Art); Betty V. Kieffer, Roy F. Nash, Clarence L. Rakow BRANCH EDITORIAL OFFICES CHICAGO 1, ILL. Room 926, 36 South Wabash A v e . Phone State 2-5148 Teletype CG 725 Associate Editors: Howard J. Sanders, Chester Placek, Laurence J. White HOUSTON 2 , TEX., 718 Melrose Bldg. Phone Fairfax 3-7107 Teletype HO 72 Associate Editor: Bruce F. Greek Assistant Editor: Earl V. Anderson NEW YORK 16, Ν. Υ., 2 Park A v e . Phone Oregon 9-1646 Teletype NY 1 -4726 Associate Editors: William Q. Hull, Harry Stenerson, David M . Kiefer, D. Gray Weaver, Walter S. Fedor, Morton Salkind Assistant Editor: Louis A . Agnello SAN FRANCISCO 4, CALIF. 703 Mechanics' Institute Bldg., 57 Post St. Phone Exbrook 2-2895 Teletype SF 549 Associate Editors: Richard H. Newhall, David E. Gushee EASTON, PA. 20th and Northampton Sts. Phone Blackburn 8-9111 Teletype ESTN Pa 48 Associate Editor: Charlotte C. Sayre Editorial Assistants: Joyce A . Richards, Elizabeth R. Rufe, June A . Barron EUROPEAN OFFICE Bush House, Aldwych, London Phone Temple Bar 3605 Cable JIECHEM Associate Editor: Albert S. Hester Contributing Editors: H. Carl Bauman, Robert F. Wall, James B. Weaver, W. J. Youden Advisory Board: A . H. Batchelder, R. L. Bate­ man, James M . Church, Lauchlin M . Currie, George Harrington, Gustave Heinemann, Rafael Katzen, Joseph H. Koffolt, Samuel D. Koonce, C. J. Krister, E. E. McSweeney, F. Drew Mayfield, H. Gladys Swope, George Thodos, Richard C. Waugh READERSHIP

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Is T e a m w o r k A l w a y s the Answer? r^. HERETICAL question for an editor to ask?—particularly in a magazine whose monthly philosophical feature "The Professional Side" was in July 1957 titled " I t Ain't the Individual," and led off with "It's the everlastin' teamwork of every bloomin' soul . . . I/EC's readers need no reminding that teamwork is an essential ingredient of any successful industrial project." Well, maybe. But what prompts such a question? Similai threads of thought voiced within the past few months in quite different areas—such places as the Saturday Evening Post, the British Chemistry and Industry, and even the new Pope, John X X I I I . The pitch is whether group action and conformity stifle creative effort, and to what extent. Those who have been reading the unusual series "Adventures of the Mind" in the Saturday Evening Post will recall Arthur M. Schlesinger's "The Decline of Greatness." Dr. Schlesinger introduces the question, "Where does the great man fit into our homogenized society?" with this paragraph: " 'The greatness of England is now all collective,' John Stuart Mill wrote a century ago: 'individually small, we only appear capable of anything great by our habit of combining.' He might have been writing about contemporary America; but where we Americans are inclined to rejoice over the superiority of the 'team,' Mill added somberly, 'It was men of another stamp than this that made England what it has been; and men of another stamp will be needed to prevent its decline.' " The thread is picked up by an enginecr-inventor-consultant, Fred Lichtgarn, asking in Chemical Processing, "When will management realize the creative new idea—really new—is the result of one man zvorking alone, or at least semiindependently from the 'team.' The team develops ideas; it doesn't originate them." Chemistry and Industry echoes with "New advances in every field of endeavour depend mainly on creative individuals who are willing to take the risks of traveling off the beaten path." Du Pont's president Crawford Greenewalt, a great supporter of team effort, says, "In the very nature of our mass effort, there lies the grave danger that the in­ dividual will be conformed and shaped to the general pattern, with the loss of his unique, original contributions . . . The great problem, the great question, is to develop within the framework of the group the creative genius of the individual." It seems to us that we have a situation where everyone may be right under cer­ tain conditions. Mr. Buchanan, whom we quoted at the beginning, is also a Du Pont man. He was talking about teamwork in which the team was an all-star team, recruited from research development, production, advertising, sales, etc. The really new, creative idea developed by this team stemmed from the late Wallace Carothers, more of an ivory-tower individual. Mr. Lichtgarn feels that results arc obtained from team research, but with very low efficiency. Even efficiency may have different connotations. American chemical industry has actually estab­ lished some ivory-tower senior scientist positions ; but Fred Frey of Phillips, discuss­ ing "The Exploratory Attitude" three years ago in I/EC, said, "Lodging a few indi­ viduals in ivory-tower research is now common and of proved worth, but for more thinkers and a wider reach we look to the main body of research personnel too." Teamwork, committee-style, might stifle progress or delay it. Bruce Old of Arthur D. Little, in making fun of committees in a satirical mathematical study, found himself baffled by a graph peaking the efficiency of the output of a committee versus the number of members at seven tenths of a person. The answer must be that whether teamwork is always the answer or not depends on the project, on the team, on the various levels at which teamwork may be tried, and on its supervision or lack of it. Our research institutes so common and so successful today are really team efforts. Operations research is one aspect of teamwork; brainstorming, endorsed and de­ bunked, is teamwork which as one of its ground rules deliberately promotes creativ­ ity. The success of all these lies, wc think, in proper organization. Two years ago Herbert A. Shepard, writing for us on "The Destructive Side of Creativity" made a telling point when he said that "left uncontrolled, creativity creates chaos . . . we want creativity within an authority structure." And finally we go back to the wise words of the late Emmett K. Carver of East­ man Kodak, who authored our first guest "Professional Side" feature. One of Dr. Carver's most emphatic views was on the importance to the individual of a sense of importance, and he developed the theme that the ability of the supervision and the morale it engendered were the secret of the amount and kind of creativity on the part of the individuals at any time. Management must take all steps to see that neither its own light nor that of any of its team members is hidden under a bushel. Pope John was not talking about research, but was talking about teams, when as Monsignor Roncalli he appealed to industrial managers "to consider that brilliant intelligence and wealth have not been given to you in order to balance your budgets, but in order to operate for the benefit of the whole human family." If wc may borrow Du Pont's famous slogan of "Better things for better living through chemistry," the lessons are obvious