Teamwork Is a Scam

Everyone cheers for teamwork. Nobody wants to pay the tax.

You suffer the meetings, slackers, and conflicts. The business pockets the gains. Going solo work might be your better bet.

ATTENTION: I celebrate the 100th post of this newsletter with a rebranding. The Maverick Mapmaker is now The Solo Chief. Different name, same obnoxious attitude!

Some people should not join a team.

At a funeral I attended, the daughter-in-law of the deceased scrambled forward to claim her position as a carrier of the coffin, dismissing concerns from her family that it would likely be too heavy for her. “She’s my mom. I will do her the honor!”

Sure enough, when she took a position at the front, she nearly buckled under the strain of the coffin, nearly crashing it headfirst into the floor. The entire family drew a collective breath while the other five pallbearers scrambled to regain balance, each of them carrying an additional load to compensate for the diminished support at the front. For a few dozen meters, the daughter-in-law was obviously not doing much of the carrying.

I think she should not have volunteered for that team.

A few years later, when it was time to carry my mother to her last resting place, I declined to take a position as a pallbearer. I wasn’t sure if I was up to the task, and the last thing I wanted was for the other volunteers to take up the slack. I had decided my talent lay elsewhere.

I prefer to operate alone.

Why Teamwork Is Overrated: The Challenge

You’ve probably had your own experiences with challenging teamwork.

You may have been on an assignment with a “team” of slackers, loafers, and free riders, perhaps in high school or at university. One “team member” carried zero weight, another had practically no talent, and the third was always sick and disappeared from day one. Who was the one carrying the project toward the finish line? Who was the one earning the highest mark that was then collected equally by the entire team? You, of course.

Or you sat on an agile team that did everything democratically and collectively: shared autonomy, shared empowerment, shared backlog, shared cadence, and shared outcomes. Hell, there was even a shared restroom. But do you remember what never got shared, ever? The end-of-year performance reviews. Nor the salaries. Nor the bonuses. And there was definitely no agile team in sight when colleagues competed for a promotion.

Or maybe you assembled a “team” of designers, artists, editors, builders, translators, and other contributors to work on a book, course, or video series. Everyone was “super excited” to be collaborating with you on this product! They all pitched in and did the jobs you hired them for. But guess who was the only one suffering when the product didn’t sell? When the only ones picking it up were three friends and two former colleagues? You, again. All other “team members” got decently paid and moved on to the next job.

Let’s be honest here. Because there’s no way to say this gently.

Solopreneurs know this. Single founders know this. Most creators know this. And almost every manager in the world is in on the charade. I know it too because I’ve practiced each of these roles for years. Every time I asked people to work as a team, I did that to benefit the organization, not the individuals.

The Benefits of Teamwork (for the Business)

The science of teams is clear: there are plenty of benefits to working as a team. I’m sure you recognize some.

• Teams Are More Productive - Put competent people together and output usually rises. The presence of others sharpens focus, boosts energy on routine tasks, and discourages slacking. Add clear, high-quality communication, and performance climbs faster than endless email threads ever could. (link)

• Teams Are More Innovative - When people think differently, they challenge assumptions and expand options. Cognitive diversity forces deeper processing instead of lazy consensus. If the team stays curious instead of tribal, solutions get smarter and more creative than solo work ever delivers. (link)

• Teams Are More Daring - Shared responsibility lowers the fear of failure. Teams are more willing to test bold ideas when the risks are distributed. That slight psychological safety bump can turn people’s personal “maybe someday” experiments into actual collective innovation initiatives. (link)

• Teams Are More Effective - Strong teams build a mental map of who knows what. That shared directory of expertise speeds up decision-making. When unique information surfaces instead of staying hidden, decisions improve and complexity becomes manageable. It’s the fundamental principle of the division of labor applied to teams. (link)

• Teams Are More Intelligent - The best teams win because of interaction quality, not because one lone genius dominates. Balanced participation, social sensitivity, and a shared understanding of goals create consistent performance across tasks, instead of occasional flashes of brilliance. System performance is in the interactions, not in the parts. (link)

This all sounds marvelous, of course. But do you recognize the issue here? Can you see the devious trick?

All these pluses of teamwork are benefits for the organization, not for the team member. Nobody I worked with ever said, “I’m so happy I’m more productive for the company while being paid exactly the same.” Not a single person I know has said, “I’m so proud our team invented things the company is taking credit for.” And the last time I heard, “I’m really glad I can’t continue my work while waiting for Susan’s expertise,” was … ehm … never.