Tough Without a Team

A few weeks ago, I was having my hair cut in "Ayshes" in the Stevenage indoor market when there was a power cut, not all the market, just the shop units on one side, which included the hairdressers. Its an old-style hairdressers womens side on one half of the shop, men on the other -around 6 chairs on each side. In the dark without hardly any discussion, (apparently this had happened before) they picked up the chairs and I found myself seated in a "bus like" arrangement in the middle of the market place with my grey nylon cape and wet hair.
Sitting surrounded by the quiet industrious hairdressers in the market place made me think how much I missed working in a team.
A team of individuals
In the sort of environments I work in, usually the "team" really is a group of individuals with different and sometimes conflicting objectives. Improving the team spirit is difficult as the individuals on the team are highly competent, and educated, and often do not see the need to collaborate, and some feel that they will be be slowed down by working in a collaborative way. For some this of course may be true.
It is interesting that there is often a focus on a modern advance or tool which appears to be a desire to leapfrog a community or discipline to avoid interacting or consulting whether this is a secretarial or administrative group or technical group usually proposed as a cost saving exercise. Under the pressure  to make quicker decisions the decision-making groups  round the table are smaller and less diverse and more increasingly compliant to senior management sentiments.
Skeleton team
Increasingly due to costs, the skeleton team is now a mainstream approach which means you may be in highly skilled team but there will be only one member from each discipline. In the current crisis there is a resistance to take on trainees or lesser-skilled people as there is no time designated for people to train them. The lack of a technical community to discuss your problems can be stressful, also,when arguing cross-discipline it helps to not be the only one in disagreement. If no-one else understands your point of view you can be seen as obstructive or difficult. Having your work peer-reviewed by your own community helps build your confidence and promotes discussion. Processes are difficult to enforce on the wider community ie. adhering to naming conventions/configuration control if you are the only one in support of this sort of basic quality, improvement initiatives, you may just be seen as being  "picky".
Pushing the Limits.
With a tough isolating work environment that is currently evolving it is also important to have good emotional support at home, family pets etc. (easier said than done!). Its now common to build technical community networks that transcends a place of work. Techies usually belong to interest groups on the internet, although this is a great source of support for an individual, it is not always possible or desirable to use this a replacement for the workplace social environment. As technical work becomes more complex, the levels of finance low and the expectations increasingly high, it maybe that a return to working in teams becomes once again becomes more desirable due to the limits of the human individual and not least because of the deep human need for people (scientists,engineers & hairdressers ;)) to work with each other.