teamwork let you cross valleys : POM Lesson 6.

Objective: Learn about importance of teamwork and its constituting elements with the help of a valley crossing exercise.

The valley crossing exercise was performed in order to demonstrate the importance of team work. Team work involves many facets some of them being communication, coordination, interdependence,  trust, support, contribution from members and cohesion between members.

the exercise: Valley Crossing

The activity involved 3 persons crossing a valley with the support of the rod. The distance between two ends of the cliff was more than 1 step but less than 2 steps. The activity was to be performed in such a way, that at any instance of time during the crossing of valley, not more than 1 member was at risk, i.e. if one person was at risk during the act of valley crossing, the other two members would take up that person’s weight. In this way the inter-dependency between the members was tightly coupled which is one of the most facets of team work.

It is also to be noted that when one of the persons is at risk, that person has to trust the other two persons to ensure that the objective is achieved. In this way, during the entire exercise, all the persons are at equal risk and need confidence and trust between the members to achieve the objective. 

 Three wise men Crossing the valley  - Detailed task process

earlier we learnt about de-skilling (breaking an element into small small processes and thus precluding the need for expertise) and its far reaching impact. in the same manner, if we apply the process of de-skilling to this problem we can break it into 9 steps. the pictorial representation of the process flow is as follows:

based on the step per step situation, we can draw following inferences:

Persons	First Person	Second Person	Third person
Steps
1	Safe	Safe	Safe
2	Half Risky
3	Full Risky
4	Half Risky	Half Risky
5		Full Risky
6		Half Risky	Half Risky
7			Full Risky
8			Half Risky
9	Safe	Safe	Safe

• Safe - Both the legs of the person have full support
• Half Risky – One leg in the air and the other leg has support
• Full risky - Both the legs are in the air without any support
• Half risky – One leg is in the air and the other leg has support
• Safe - Both the legs have full support

Lessons Learnt

Responsibility

When a team is assigned a work or has to achieve an objective, each member of the team should be responsible enough to complete their portion of the task. If even one member of the team is not responsible to complete their portion, then the entire objective is at a risk and can lead to harsh consequences.

Communication

During the process of performing a task, there needs to be effective communication between the group members for two main reasons.

The first reason can be to know the status of the work performed so that the percentage task completion of the task can be gauged  The second reason can be related to the clarity of the task between the members. If even one member interprets the task incorrectly, the whole objective of the group is put at stake.

Confidence and Trust

The organization cannot be successful if there is no element of trust in it. As in the case of valley exercise, persons can take the risk to cross the valley only since they trust the other two. Similarly for the organization to be successful, managers and workers have to follow the Theory X which tells the people or managers have trust on the other people or employees for the job to be completed effectively.

Innovation

When the team members have gelled , then innovation is something that comes on its own. A good team always has a good number of people who come up with innovative ideas all the time.

 Clear goals The goals were clear, defined and each member in the team fully understood the gravity of the problem.  

after all, as it is said:

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bonafide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.

We shall discuss more about organization management principle in future. please write your comments and suggestion.