The trend towards greater teamwork has been extolled in business & management schools for well over 2 decades now, But still when we consider executive pay, leadership, innovation and other qualities, we're laying on sparse praise to the team, hard praise to the leader. It's not the team that makes Facebook - it's Zuckerberg (at the exclusion of even his co-founders). The ghost of Steve Jobs still hovers over Apple, but it's Tim Cook that reigns, not some more amorphous "team". When we talk about Microsoft's success, it's what Bill Gates and Paul Allen did, and what Steve Ballmer and later didn't do.

Howard Dean arguably put together the first modern internet-based campaign, which Obama successfully expanded in 2008 (and seemed to disband shortly after). But in 2016 we saw a pretty amazing team come together to push Bernie for President. Where did this team come from? Did Bernie organize it? Was it left over from #OccupyWallStreet? Is it an ongoing progressive grassroots effort that's existed since Bradley days and before? Who leads this movement? Supposedly Bernie led it with "#FeelTheBern", but he fell off the map pretty quickly post-convention. What's the real scoop?

An article in Salon yesterday saying blacks don't feel the Hillary burn referenced the "super-predator" comment from 1994, back when crime rates were super high and drive by's were common. Curious what man would be held accountable for a throwaway term 2 decades ago? Bush's "Mission Accomplished" came in a full aircraft carrier landing with flightsuit, not just a word in a group meeting. As someone invariably pointed out in the comments, but lost in the main article, the Clintons had worked with black leaders on the crime bill, on the part protecting women and limiting automatic weapons, and in other ways sought compromise to push sensible crime measures forward, to treat an epidemic.  What are the pitfalls of this team approach? As Nixon noted, the problem with asking other people's opinion is sooner or later you have to take it.

First, Hillary wasn't President, so anything positive accrues to her husband, negative sticks to her. Actions taken in cooperation with the black community becomes the community's, not her (or his) personally "solving" crime. And it relies more on their acting and following up, and not what simply actions by fiat. Similarly the decision on AUMF Iraq, despite all the surrounding speeches explaining the goals and caveats in Congress, the signoff and limitations from the UN Security Council, the carefully coded statements from the UN Inspections Team & Hans Blix, and anything else, still came down to 1 person, in this case perversely Hillary rather than Bush.

Health care is a community issue, filled with large amounts of compromise, a huge spider's web of intricately interconnected decisions, repercussions and side effects. It's based on teamwork, understanding of different stakeholders, interests, requirements. But in political speak decisions are made absolutely - there aren't multiple parties to blame - it all reverts to 1 person. Consider the ACA website - as if the President of the US would be down in the weeds on the actual launch of a Web portal, rather than tending to dozens of areas that are politically and executively important.

JFK said, victory has many fathers but failure is an orphan. But in reality it's different - we assign success to an individual, rightly or wrongly to a particular character. The Civil Rights Act went to LBJ, despite the importance of what MLK did and the hundreds of other organizations and efforts involved and millions of people in the trenches. Certainly JFK was assigned the Bay of PIgs as well, though that was much closer to his personal ability to control absolutely. But in teamwork, decisions and authority are by definition delegated, and we use the system to finetune the results. Sure, there can be individuals who are faulty, but more often there are faulty processes - bad sharing of information, poor delegation of action, unclear rules and responsibility.

Women are typically team players. Behind the successful men we see heading companies, there are frequently female assistants taking care of their schedules, their important tasks, sitting in on meetings to give critical background advice or filling in the huge gaps in the typical 4-8 point PowerPoint plan (along with the women that take care of their home lives while they're absent - except when the leader's a woman and still fills in the home duties).

The cognitive dissonance we feel is partly from Hillary's role as active policty facilitator in the background as First Lady, as actual breadwinner during Bill's governor/Attorney General years, as reach-across-the-aisles networker as junior Senator, and as roughly a team supporter with significantly limited powers as Secretary of State. We don't credit male players with the same kinds of perceived authority nor responsibility as we do women, or at least Hillary in a team context. I've never heard of Colin Powell as being responsible for the decision to invade Iraq, only his deceptive UN speech in support, while Hillary is assumed to own the Libyan invasion despite signoff by her boss Obama and the leaders of 3 or 4 European countries (probably some Arab ones as well).

Consider Marissa Mayer's tenure at Yahoo!. While she arguably made some mistakes, even her signature big mistake of acquiring Tumblr only to write down 2/3 of its value 3 years later isn't near the failure it seems to be. First, at $1.1. billion for a company in distress, it wasn't as big a deal as HP's Autonomy deal for $8 billion - a complete loss, similar to the Nokia failure when sold off to Microsoft - and Yahoo! had to try something/anything to catch up in the critical mobile sector it had missed. Plus it was 1/5th the size of 2 earlier Yahoo! failed acquisitions a decade earlier. 

Second, Tumblr continued to perform pretty well and brought some important synergies to Yahoo! (teamwork, again), but the integration of Tumblr and Yahoo! lost it sales revenues in practice. Still, Yahoo! stock price continued to rise under her leadership, and while selling Yahoo! off to Verizon for nearly $5 billion was lower than its valuation in the heady days of 2000, it was quite a bit above real value when Mayer took over. Even her maligned multimillion payout is lower than that given Wells Fargo's discredited chiefs who are fired for illegally opening accounts and credit cards for thousands of customers to gain undeserved fees. Instead, Marissa will be remembered for a million dollar party (nothing out of ordinary in Silicon Valley, only whether it was successful in business goals) and for ending Yahoo!'s counter-productive telecommuting policy that had a company on the downslope working with empty offices half the time.

In short, the accretion of credit is very unbalanced, and plays not just into sexism, but also the way we credit teamwork and related actions. A male leader would be expected to slash Yahoo!'s body count and end telecommuting. A female leader is expected to maintain ship without anything too drastic (but meet investors' inflated expectations) - i.e. keep the team spirit going. A male leader will be expected to walk away with a huge salary and stock options - a female leader will be expected to take compensation in line with her actual accomplishments and the good of the company. A male leader can buy an island in the Pacific or a huge yacht to race in the Word Cup or buying a $50K watch, and that's the perks and mystique of being an effective CEO. For female CEOs, buying designer clothes invites criticism of largesse - note Hillary's designer pantsuits or coat vs. McCain's expensive but comfortable shoes, both necessary for the campaign trail.

In short, men are judged by how they stick out, women by how they fit in. The politics of teamwork doesn't bode well for a figure that gets more credit than others, whereas for men, "team" is a euphemism for "there is no you in team, only 'me'". Note the outpouring of advice for Hillary this past week (or past 2 years, whenever the polls dip slightly or...) - women aren't supposed to be the deciders - they're supposed to take input from the team and then act on it, roughly a stenographer or secretary or someone arranging the catering for an event. Studies show that even women pay much less attention to other women's advice in meetings than men, and that men get much more talking time and deference.

Expect much much more of this the next 8 years - America's in for a steep learning curve.