Descubre por qué el verdadero éxito está en el trabajo en equipo

And why it's not always what it seems

"I work better alone"

"I work better alone."

I've heard this phrase dozens of times. From colleagues, from people reporting to me, from anyone I needed results from.

• A designer says — I work better alone
• A CNC operator — I work better alone
• A construction foreman — don't bother me, I'll handle it myself

I never understood them. Or rather — I understood from the angle of fear. Fear of explaining your decisions, fear of depending on others, fear that someone will screw it up. That I could see. But from a common sense perspective — no. Because my common sense outweighed my fear.

Saying "I work alone" sounds cool when you want to show off. But deep down you know it's bullshit. Showing off at twenty when you're hot-blooded — fine. But past thirty, or forty? That's just embarrassing.

Yes, I do my own design, my own layout, my own typography. But not because "I work better alone." It's because there often wasn't anyone around worth working with. When a producer brings in his wife for approval because "she went to art school, she knows design" — that's not collaboration. That's a circus.

And here's the thing: working alone works. Up to a point.

The math of going solo

No matter how good you are, you still have 24 hours in a day, one head, and two hands. You can optimize processes, automate the grind, pull all-nighters — and for a while, it'll even work. But eventually you hit a ceiling, and no amount of late shifts will raise it.

Meanwhile, someone else — maybe not as skilled in your craft — teams up with people. And at some point, their combined results start outpacing yours. Not because they're smarter or more talented, but because their capacity stopped being limited to one person.

I've seen this happen more than once, and I know how it works from the inside — because sometimes I got lucky and found the right people.

When it works

I worked with Marina at BK. I was training director, she was opening director. There was also a territorial manager. I'll be kind — let's call him "dead weight." Marina and I carried everything.

And here's what's interesting: we didn't need to tell each other what to do. I handled training — I saw the tasks, took everything in my lane and everything the TM wasn't doing. Marina did the same. Two people who think, see, take ownership — no instructions needed.

When that happens — the output of two exceeds the sum of what each could do alone. Not arithmetic progression, but geometric. Two or three people on the same wavelength — that's the ideal. Five — combat-ready. Seven — the limit before chaos kicks in or you need different approaches entirely.

This makes me think of Takeshi Kovacs from Altered Carbon. Why him — will become clear in a moment. Kovacs is the last of the Envoys, the emissaries. A war machine trained to be completely autonomous. One Envoy is worth an army. But even Kovacs was strongest not alone, but with his pack — people who needed no explanations, who saw what he saw and stepped up without orders.

Quell — their leader, the one who created the Envoys — said: "A wolf's true strength isn't fangs, speed, or skill. It's the pack. Whatever world you end up in — build a pack. Find a way to earn loyalty."

Find your pack — and you'll stop hitting that ceiling.

Sounds simple. But here's where it gets into territory nobody talks about — and why I brought up Kovacs specifically.

So why stay alone

"I work alone" has reasons. And none of them is laziness.

Incompetence everywhere

The producer drags out approval for three weeks. The director can't see past his own nose. The boss consults his wife because she "went to art school, knows about design."

Or here's one from another industry: we're willing to ruin aluminum billets at €300,000 a piece — rather than pay skilled CNC operators enough so they don't ruin them. Penny-wise decisions that burn down the house.

In construction — same shit. Everywhere, the same damn thing.

Sometimes "I work better alone" isn't fear or pride. It's a justified response to the idiocy around you. You're not hiding from collaboration — you're hiding from incompetence dressed up as collaboration.

Pain

This one's harder to talk about.

Kovacs found his pack — the Envoys, Quell, people he would die for. And he lost them all. Betrayal, a virus, a ship explosion — the entire pack wiped out in a single day. Two hundred years on ice. When they thawed him out, he tried to live alone — a mercenary with no attachments, no pack. Because if there's no pack, there's no one to lose. And at the crucial moment, when people he could trust appeared again, he tried to push them away. Not because he didn't want them close. Because he knew how it ends. He wasn't just afraid for himself — he was afraid for them. That being near him would get them killed too.

This isn't just about war and science fiction. It's about any work where you found your people — and they left. Not because you had a falling out. The context just ended. You left the company. The project shut down. Life pulled you apart.

Nobody dies in our case, of course. But we make similar stupid mistakes — pushing people away, closing off, going solo — not because life and death are on the line, but because of fears that, when you actually look at them, turn out to be dumb and unfounded. But no less real for it.

I worked with Marina — then I left BK. Worked with Katya at NotNowSchool — then NNS closed down. No fights, no disappointments. The context disappeared — and the connection vanished with it.

And there you are, alone again. You already know how good it can be when the right people are around — and you know it'll end sooner or later. And some part of you starts whispering: maybe better not to start at all? Easier to protect yourself from the pain in advance, even if loneliness will ache constantly — at least it's familiar.

This isn't weakness. For many people, this is the main factor. The one nobody mentions in articles about productivity and teamwork.

The right people are rare

"Bring people in" — sounds like advice from the "sad? don't be sad, homeless? buy a house, poor? get rich" school. Easy to say. But in practice — which people? Where?

The right people are scarce. The ones who create synergy, not approval chains. The ones who don't need the obvious explained. The ones who step up not because they were asked, but because they see what needs doing.

Two or three people like that across an entire career — that's not few. That's normal. They don't show up on schedule and you won't find them on LinkedIn.

My circle is small. I'm trying to expand it the only way I have energy for — I write. The blog is a lighthouse. Not for an audience, not for subscribers, not for monetization. So my people can find me. So someone reads this and thinks: "This person thinks the way I do."

Maybe that's not the right approach. But it's all I have strength for right now. And that too — is an honest answer.

What to do with this

I'm not going to say "learn to collaborate and everything will work out." That would be a lie.

Kovacs never stopped being a loner. He stayed an Envoy — autonomous, dangerous, capable of acting alone. But he stopped rejecting the pack when it appeared. Stopped closing off preemptively. Not because it stopped hurting. Because being alone — hurts more. And in our case — it's duller. Slower. Quieter. Life doesn't stop, but it doesn't really go anywhere either.

Here's what I know for sure:

"I work alone" — isn't a diagnosis or a verdict. Behind that phrase could be pride — or pain. Laziness — or hard-earned experience. A guy who says "I'll figure it out, back off" — or a woman who was ignored so many times in teams that she decided to build her own thing solo. Fear of looking weak — or fear of trusting again and getting burned. Or all of the above.

Don't limit yourself immediately and unconditionally. But don't blame yourself for being alone either. There's something real behind it — and it's worth figuring out what.

Your pack is out there somewhere. Maybe right now, someone is reading this and thinking the exact same thing.