Page Title

Hot Potatoes

July 9, 2002

"There are always tasks no one wants to do.  They are routine, or unpleasant, or they don't play to our strengths.  Paperwork is probably the number one item avoided.  Phone calls bother some people.  Evaluating people.  Filing reports.  Getting rid of the old grounds in the coffee pot.  Terrible things.

But these tasks still have to be done.  And trouble occurs when team members refuse to handles these hot potatoes.

Managers and team leaders bend over backward to find some way to get these tasks done without forcing team members to do them.  They pass them on to resource team members, or farm them out completely to third-party providers.  Or they too turn their backs on the unpleasant tasks, and ignore the mounting negatives.

They are wrong to do this.  The right this is to make everyone do their fair share (Robbins & Finley, 2000, pp. 54-55)."

Reference:  Robbins, H. & Finley, M., (2000).  The new why teams don't work: what goes wrong and how to make it right.  San Francisco:  Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

What hot potatoes does your team need to handle?

The New Why Teams Don't Work is available on loan from the Ohio State University Leadership Center.  A complete listing of all the Leadership Center's resources is available on our website http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu/

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Created: 2008-12-13, Updated: 2009-10-29