Getting to Know You

Imagine what happens when you take 500 strangers, throw them into a room, and get them to co-operate on performing a big task.  Well, there is no need to imagine, because that is exactly what is happening with this party (except we're not in a room, unless it's a chatroom).

We all understand that having lots of enthusiastic individuals is not the same as having an effective team.  In a good team, people restrain their personal instincts and do the best job they can for the team.  But in a new team, it takes time to work out the best way to use everyone's talents.  My mind wanders back to playing football as a kid.  Most kids want to play striker, but if everyone plays striker then the team will lose.  You need some people to make tackles, defend, and pass the ball forward.  Kids want to chase the ball, to be where the excitement is.  In a good team people realize they have to reliably play their part, even if that means being patient and not chasing the excitement.  Right now, we are a group of strangers trying to work out how to be a team.  We need patience, and tolerance, and we need to realize that there will be mistakes and disagreements.  People will compete for certain roles, whilst other roles will go unfilled.  But if we think of the team, and not of ourselves as individuals, we have the best chance of success.  Politics is a team activity, and the Pirate Party UK will succeed or fail as a team.

Why am I telling you all this?  Mostly you know all this already, but it never harms to remind people of the importance of building a team and finding compromises that make the most of the talents on offer.  For some tasks, we have too many volunteers. For other tasks, we have too few.  That people want to design posters and promotional materials is great, but we need to be realistic - not everybody's design can be used.  It is more powerful to use the best designs very many times than to have many designs competing with each other as well as the public's attention.  Whilst we have many volunteers who want to engage in design, or who are willing to offer their IT skills, we have a shortage in other areas.  The other day I asked for volunteers with expert skills that we currently lack.  We are short of people with legal skills, accounting or other finance training, economists and journalists.  The response has not been great.  That is not anyone's fault - if the current members are mostly people who work in design or IT, and do not work in law or journalism, then there is no point complaining.  We just need to find ways to attract supporters in those particular fields, and persuade them to volunteer and play an active role.  But gaps in the team will limit our ability even in areas where we have plenty of volunteers, just as strikers do not score goals if there is nobody to pass the ball to them.

Please don't take your teammates for granted.  I have had quite a few queries myself about why I don't do this and why I don't do that.  There is an easy answer - shortage of time.  Many people make light work, but just because we have many people doing one job, that doesn't mean we have many people doing every job.  I'm not complaining, as it is natural to demand more from your teammates.  I am a demanding person myself, and some of you will have already noticed that.  You had better get used to me asking/persuading/cajoling/harrying people to do the various important things that need doing but which are not getting done.  I just hope we can all step back and remember, from time to time, that everybody needs to work for the team.  Working for the team means having a shared and common set of priorities.  In other words, realizing we cannot all agree on every detail, but that we need to work to a single plan.  Working for the team means the right amount of communication.  In other words, making sure the right people have the right information at the right time; neither overloading people nor failing to let others know what you are doing.  Working for the team also means helping and forgiving our teammates, even if they just did something that made you really angry!

Teammates, shipmates, we no longer sail under our individual flags. We sail under the same collective banner - the flag of the Pirate Party UK. The crew is new. It will take time for us to find how best to work together. But if we all promise to work together, as a single crew with a single purpose, we will reach our destination.