"Teamwork was more accepted 40 years ago"
About this Quote
Nostalgia is doing a lot of quiet work in Ken Olsen's line, and that is precisely why it lands. “Teamwork was more accepted 40 years ago” isn’t a neutral observation about office culture; it’s a soft indictment of what came after. Olsen, a businessman formed in the midcentury corporate world, is gesturing toward an era when conformity was a feature, not a bug: big organizations, clear hierarchies, long tenures, and a social contract that rewarded fitting in. In that environment, “teamwork” often meant coordinated effort, yes, but also deference to process, patience with bureaucracy, and a willingness to subordinate personal flair to institutional goals.
The phrasing is revealing. He doesn’t say teamwork was better, or more effective. He says it was “more accepted,” which implies resistance in the present: skepticism toward committees, suspicion of management-speak, the rise of individual branding, and workplace arrangements that dilute shared identity (remote work, gig labor, flatter org charts in name but not always in practice). “Accepted” also hints at a cultural shift from loyalty to leverage. Workers today are encouraged to optimize for themselves because institutions often do the same.
There’s subtext, too, about power. Calls for “teamwork” are frequently made by people who benefit from coordination more than they bear its costs. When Olsen looks back 40 years, he’s also remembering a time when it was easier to ask for buy-in without having to earn trust. The line reads like a lament for cohesion, but it also exposes how modern employees have learned to interrogate what “team player” really means: collaboration, or compliance.
The phrasing is revealing. He doesn’t say teamwork was better, or more effective. He says it was “more accepted,” which implies resistance in the present: skepticism toward committees, suspicion of management-speak, the rise of individual branding, and workplace arrangements that dilute shared identity (remote work, gig labor, flatter org charts in name but not always in practice). “Accepted” also hints at a cultural shift from loyalty to leverage. Workers today are encouraged to optimize for themselves because institutions often do the same.
There’s subtext, too, about power. Calls for “teamwork” are frequently made by people who benefit from coordination more than they bear its costs. When Olsen looks back 40 years, he’s also remembering a time when it was easier to ask for buy-in without having to earn trust. The line reads like a lament for cohesion, but it also exposes how modern employees have learned to interrogate what “team player” really means: collaboration, or compliance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Team Building |
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