Who is the hero - you or the team?

Whether you are working within an organization or you have your own business - there are tasks to do and a person who has to do them. The questions is, if it's more efficient to work in parallel on several tasks or to work on one specific task as a team. Pros and Cons:

Working alone: When you work alone, you can do it completely autonomously. You own your time and that gives you the feeling of freedom. However, it's sometimes difficult to keep the required discipline to be productive. It's easier to find distraction (either on television, facebook or 9gag). Sometimes it's hard, because you might have questions or need somebody else's opinion. On the other hand, the work itself is less exhausting - You don't always have to explain your thoughts to someone else or even defend them. Communication is also hard work, don't forget that!

Working as a team: It's relatively irrelevant, if you are in teams of two or ten guys (teams shouldn't get too large, of course - otherwise you feel again like being on your own, in some way), teams change the way we work completely. Most of the elements of our motivation lay within social factors - status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness (SCARF). It's important for us to feel recognized, safe and as a part of something bigger. Working in teams gives you these feelings - it motivates you to get something done, show it to your colleagues and earn their praise (hopefully).

Moreover it increases your creative potential tremendously. Even within a team of two creativity gets multiplied. The simple fact that there is someone who listens to your ideas (and comments it) helps you reflect them. A listener is the first possibility to confirm your ideas outside your head. Moreover they can bounce back and lead to further ideas. Knowledge feeds itself in this way.

There are pros and cons for both ways. So how can work be handled efficiently? A really useful tool is the daily meeting in the morning (Stand-up meeting), where you go briefly through the planned tasks for the day. Decide which ones are boring, need high concentration, need creative energy or consist of challenging parts, which require a lot of skills.

Boring tasks: Should be done as a team - design a game to get the tasks more interesting (who is the first one, who receives 10 answers on email-requests)

High concentration tasks: Do them alone. Seriously - working in a team is fun, but if you have to think deep, it's not really useful. Plan a certain amount of time, that you want to invest (for example a pomodori of 25 minutes) - and do the fun parts afterwards.

Creative tasks: Do them together. It's much more productive - without any doubt. Even if the guys aren't involved in your project. Give them a short briefing and they will be helpful with their ideas. Even when they have absolutely no idea, what you are talking about. They will ask the kind of "silly" questions, that gets you thinking (And as we know, silly questions don't exist ;) )

Challenging tasks: Especially when you are an entrepreneur, you often face new tasks, which require knowledge and skills you don't have; and your colleagues probably neither  But it can be frustrating to experience that alone. So do it as a team. First, explore which skills you actually need to solve the task, understand and learn them, solve it and celebrate it together. The next time, the same task could already be just another boring one ;)