When OneTeam comes together…

I’ve been talking about teamwork for a few years now and how the type of teamwork where all the parts fit might not lead to instant fame and riches, but it lays down the groundwork from where the unexpected can grow.

What I have been seeing now for years is the lack of real teamwork, because maybe the different parts don’t really fit for one reason or another, but mainly because of an “imbalance” in talent and different levels of experience and maybe even tolerance.

Often, I feel that companies, organisations, and especially governments, are a dysfunctional and scattered group of people either happy to take orders from one person, or are simply not good enough or able to think differently enough to come together and be part of one cohesive team, and so are comfortable to be part of where the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

With real teamwork and in real time, there is no weak link. Everyone had a role to play to play and this chain has been built as a chain with everyone chosen for their individual strengths.

I see the level of teamwork and that inspires me shining throughout the film “Hamnet” starting from the story was written by Maggie O’Farrell to the way her words have been interpreted by Chloe Zhao and then her vision taken further by the brilliant cast of players and the production crew.

It’s so inspiring, and the type of inspiration I find terribly lacking today along with the commitment by many to any one thing. I only see lip service because of an opportunity to be paid for services rendered.

Though understanding that there is no such thing as a free lunch, what exactly are these “services rendered”?

As the producer needing to find the right team and go through the process of knowing who is going to be in it for all the right reasons, and where someone doesn’t decide to go walkies or the tail doesn’t start wagging the dog, it’s a precarious job where you’re looking for commitment.

No one who is in charge of any project and financing it and working to a schedule has time to waste on those who are here today and gone tomorrow.

It’s one of the reasons why so much of everything being approved and produced is half arsed.

When you’ve been around the block as much as I have, it’s extremely easy to see the movers from the fakers and shakers from the fakirs and time wasting exercises or those playing for time because they’re in a financial bind.

The importance of teamwork started when first in advertising and where we learned what could happen when creative, media and account servicing came together.

There were also the infamous long lunches that lasted so long that we never returned to the office, but when three Creatives are at the same table, something magical happens and an idea is born.

This magic doesn’t happen on WhatsApp or on phone calls where the art of conversation goes in one ear and out the other.

Below is a conversation between the wonderful Jessie Buckley and her young friend from Elle magazine. It’s magic.

Whenever I would take my daughter Taryn on film shoots, and editing and recording sessions when she was around five years old, I don’t know if it did, but I would like to think that it helped shake off her shyness and for her to see what Dad did for a living.

Dad was so proud of her and how she was quiet, interested and taking it all in while being spoiled by the adults around her.

A year later, when the talent picked to appear in a McDonald’s commercial titled “Hands On Breakfast” failed to deliver, Taryn, who was watching the filming, stepped in and was great!

She sang on jingles for products like Sara Lee, and when in her early teens, appeared in an anti pollution PSA called “Pump Up Your Thinking” singing and dancing with two of school friends in a group I named Candy Rappers, which, apart from winning a Clio Award certificate, the girls received a lovely letter of Thanks from Former First Lady Mrs Barbara Bush.

Maybe this is what led her to take up multi media in university, and following a chance meeting in Hong Kong with Simon Fuller, below, who was at the height of his powers, led to Taryn working with his 19 Management and its projects like Pop Idol, SClub7 and then American Idol.

Think of the various teams she saw working together and the teams she worked with in that short and young and formative period of her life and career. 

This brings me back to what I was saying about teamwork other than the cliché about how without the team, there’s only work.

Working on my ongoing project to bring Hope, Happiness and Inspiration into the foreground of our lives and having flirted with how to bring this to fruition, the path forward is now very clear though I am extremely careful about who I bring onboard because I don’t want nor do I have time for cotton candy.

I do, however, have all the time in the world for real teamwork and the first stone was cast today by a musician friend in Australia.

It’s now about following the ripples and see where they take me and my team.

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ABOUT HANS EBERT

When he arrived by ship from what was then known as Ceylon to the British colony of Hong Kong, the Dutch Burgher- it’s a long story-thought he had arrived in Melbourne because that’s what his parents had told him- it’s an even longer story- until he saw all the rickshaws, women wearing cheongsams with slits up to their arse, and was given a pair of chopsticks during his first lunch in the city.

He had never eaten dim sum, but then again, no one told him that as a fledgling journalist, he would meet and interview everyone from Peter Sellers, Roman Polanski and George Harrison to Billy Joel, Norah Jones, Gorillaz, David Bowie and Quincy Jones, create the Happy Wednesday brand for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, win the Gold Award at the London Advertising Awards for his “Right Of Abode campaign, coin the term “Canto Pop” when writing for the American trade publication Billboard, and when in advertising not only helped launch McDonald’s in Hong Kong and work on the business as Director of Creative Services for over two decades, and was very much involved in the launch of STARTV, MTV Asia and PCCW.

He has written hits for some of the biggest names in Chinese popular music and wooed and married the model who was the Wrangler Girl. 

These days, he is rewriting his journography and working on introducing the world to his imaginary friend Muzi and their search for everything that leads to positivity by leaving the dullards behind to pursue nutworking.