TEAM

A WAY OF CORPORATE LIFE

BY
Dr Taranjeet

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The amount of performance improvement that
is possible from turned on teams is not small
it is enormous."

-------------Tom Peters

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 TEAM-A WAY OF CORPORATE LIFE

Team building has become one of the most popular and widely
used intervention for improving the management of industrial
and governmental organizations. Today’s organizations are
utilizing teams more and more to meet customer demands and
stay competitive in a changing marketplace.

Teams are replacing individuals as the basic building blocks of

modern organizations. The corporate sector here and abroad is
gradually realizing the tremendous potential of teams enabling
companies to take more creative and informed decisions and
effective coordination without the the need for close supervision.

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Lessons in Teamwork to be learned from
from an age old fable

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Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument
about who was faster.
They decided to settle the argument with a race.
They agreed on a route and started off the race.

The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time.
Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise,
he thought he would sit under a tree for some time and relax
before continuing the race.

He sat under the tree and soon fell asleep.

The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon finished the
race, emerging as the undisputed champ.

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The hare woke up and realized that he had lost the race.

Moral of the story:

“Slow and steady wins the race”.

This is the version of the story we’ve grown up with.

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Recently, the story has been retold.

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The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some
soul searching. He realized that he’d lost the race only
because he had been overconfident and careless.if he had not
taken things for granted, there’s no way the tortoise could
have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race.
The tortoise agreed.

This time the hare went all out and ran without stopping from
start to finish. He won by several miles.

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 Moral of the story:

Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and

steady.

It’s good to be slow and steady ;

but it’s better to be fast and reliable.

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But the story doesn’t end here.

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The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realized that
there’s no way he can beat the hare in a race the way it was
currently formatted. He thought for a while, and then
challenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly
differently route.

The hare agreed. They started off in keeping with his self
made commitment to be consistently fast. The hare took off
and ran at top speed until he came to a broad river. The
finishing line was a couple of kilometers on the other side of
the river.

The hare sat there wondering what to do . In the meantime

the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the
opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race.
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 Moral of the story:

First identify your core competency and

then change the playing field to suit your
core competency.

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The story still hasn’t ended.

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The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had
become pretty good friends and they did some
thinking together. Both realized that the last race
could have been run much better.

So they decided to do the last race again, but to

run as a team this time.

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They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise
till the riverbank. There , the tortoise took over and swam
across with the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the
hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the
finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of
satisfaction than they’d felt earlier.

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 Moral of the story:

It’s good to be individually brilliant and to have strong

core competencies ; but unless you’re able to work in a
team and harness each other’s core competencies, you’ll
always perform below par because there will always be
situations at which you’ll do poorly and someone else does
well.

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 Team work is mainly
about situational leadership,
letting the person
with the relevant core competency
for a situation
take leadership

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Lessons learnt from this story:
Neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures.

The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after
his failure.

The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already

working as hard as he could.

In life, when faced with failures, sometimes it is appropriate to

work harder and put in more effort.

Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try

something different.

And sometimes it is appropriate to do both. 18

The hare and the tortoise also learnt another
vital lesson.

When we stop competing against a rival and instead start

competing against the situation, we perform far better.

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 Lessons learnt from the story of hare and
tortoise are:

• Fast and consistent will always beat slow and steady.

•Work to your competencies.

•Pooling resources and working as a team will always beat

individual performers.

•Never give up when faced with failure.

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The vital Lesson that we learnt here is:

“Compete against the situation, and with the rival”.

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When we compete with others

we recognize that they are valuable resources, essential to

our own rapid progress, optimum achievement, and long
term health. Because we respect them, we respect what they
accomplish and learn from them. We sustain vigorous
competition in one area by cooperating in a host of other
areas. We share an element of playfulness and a strong sense
of us!

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"Competing with" is win-win for business

Competing with takes speed and skill.

Competing with improves corporate health, stimulates

performance, attracts better people, and improves job
satisfaction.

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When we compete against others

We treat them as obstacles to our success and enemies to be

conquered. We close our minds to learning from them.
We fail to co-operate for the common good (which necessarily
includes the good of our customers).
We operate in fear and a strong sense of not us.

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"Competing against" stymies progress

Competing against fosters secrecy and a control mentality

within a company and between a company and its customers.
Progress is slow and painful. Technologists in different
departments withhold information from one another to
protect their turf. Competitors plant "minefields" (that's
"mine") for one another and for their customers with
patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. They stifle progress:
their own, their customers,' and their competitors.'

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 Lessons
From

Geese

Objective - How relying on others promotes the goals of the team

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An animal fable from a collection of fables in Sanskrit
literature popularly known as “Panchtantra” tells of how a
flock of geese saw tragedy narrowly averted.

According to the fable, a hunter sets a big net under a tree

and scatters grains to draw the attention of the birds. Seeing
the grains from high in the sky, the flock of geese swoops
downwards and soon becomes trapped in the hunter’s net.
They begin to panic. White geese, the leader of the flock,
says to the rest of the geese,

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“There is a way to escape from this terrible fate, but
we must all agree to work together. The net is too
large and too heavy for any one of us to lift. But if
we all fly upward at the same time, I’m sure we can
lift the net and carry it away.”

The other geese quickly agree. when white geese gives

signal, the birds all fly upward at the same moment. The
hunter watches in amazement and the birds fly away with
the net into the sky.

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 Fact 1

As each goose flaps its wings, it creates an "uplift" for the

birds that follow. By flying in a "V" formation, the whole
flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew
alone.

Lesson

People who share a common direction and sense of

community can get where they are going quicker and easier
because they are traveling on the thrust of each other.

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 Fact 2

When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the

drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back
into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the
bird immediately in front of it.

Lesson

If we have as much sense as a goose, we stay in formation

with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to
accept their help and give our help to others.

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 Fact 3

When the lead bird tires, it rotates back into the formation to
take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in
front of it.

Lesson

It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing

leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each
others' skills, capabilities, and unique arrangements of gifts,
talents, or resources.
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Thus if we have as much sense of geese , we will stand by each
other
in difficult times at our workplace,
we can perform more effectively.

Thus TEAM stands for

T: TOGHTHER

E: EVERYONE

A: ACHIEVES

M: M - O - R - E
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