This past week it was our pleasure and privilege to go into the Universal Business School at Karjat and do a full day seminar on 'Running The Race'. We were basically talking to management students. We've put together a whole seminar using different resource persons. I had the privilege of going with 3 others and we spoke on 4 areas:
1. Honing the Basics
2. What are supplementary skills that are required beyond the degree?
3. How to stay fit, not only physically but mentally, psychologically, emotionally
4. How do you finish well?
I was so thrilled as I looked at the team that we had, the strengths that everybody brought to the table and how effective a platform this was in reaching out to business students. I really enjoyed the whole idea of working together in a team. I thought how important it was in teamwork to be able to give up a certain amount of control, of being in charge and to look at things as a whole; to see each person as the piece of the puzzle that they are and then evaluate how we did as a team at the end of the day.
Helen Keller said, "Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." That has been coming out so strongly and I'm sure that teamwork is something that you all understand.
John Maxwell, management guru, said, "Teamwork makes the dream work." If we have a dream, if we have something that we want to get done, then pooling resources is the best way to get it done. Otherwise the only thing we have is our reach, which is how far our hands can extend and the scope, which is how much we can hold in our open palm. That's about it! But a team brings so much more to the fore.
I was looking at a video by Angela Fernandez Orvitz, 'Effective Collaboration in Multi-disciplinary Teams.' I would encourage you to watch this. She does a brilliant job in talking about how various disciplines come together to make for effective results. This video is so beautifully graphically laid out. It made me think about Mr. Devatanu Banerjee who was with us on the team and talked about 'Mind Mapping'. That got me thinking that that was something we ought to be doing in our brain storming sessions.
She looked at collaboration and said, "That's the puzzle, right? Each piece fits in exactly where it should. But if one piece of the puzzle feels that they are not getting attention or the worth that they should get, then that piece of the puzzle gets a little big, and though it may fit the contour of the space in the puzzle perfectly, it will no longer fit there and it causes a problem. When one discipline is subordinated to the main domain and is being used mostly as a tool without much voice; if this is not settled early on, one may lose the collaboration."
Such wise words! Even before we start as teams, we set ground rules and know exactly what needs to be done and what is expected of people and how people's expertise is going to be used in this concept.
Teamwork is nothing new to you. What could I say to you that might just slip in under the knowledge that you already have and stimulate and inspire you to rethink how you look at teams in your office spaces? So I want to share a story that I came across about 5 or 6 years ago. It's from 'Good Old lessons in Teamwork from an Age-old Fable: The Tortoise and the Hare.' But this has a different twist.
Once upon a time, a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster. The hare said, "I'm the faster runner," but the tortoise said, "No, I'm faster." So they decided to settle the argument with a race. They agreed on a route and started off on the race. Of course, the hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time. Then, seeing that he was way ahead of the tortoise, he thought that he would sit under a tree for some time and relax. He even thought, "The poor guy! Even if I take a nap, he will not be able to catch up with me." So he sat under a tree and fell asleep.
The tortoise, plodding on, finally overtook him and soon finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ. The hare woke up and realized that he had lost the race.
The moral of the story as we all know is – Slow and steady wins the race. That is the version that we've all grown up with, but it's not the end of the story.
The hare was disappointed at losing the race and did some soul-searching. He realized that he'd lost the race only because he had been overconfident, careless and lax. If he had not taken things for granted, there was no way the tortoise could have beaten him. So he challenged the tortoise to another race and the tortoise agreed. This time the hare went all out and ran without stopping from start to finish and he won by several miles.
Again, the moral of the story – Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady. If you have 2 people in your organization, one slow, methodical and reliable, the other fast yet still reliable at what he/she does, the fast and reliable person will consistently climb the organizational ladder faster than the slow methodical person. It's good to be slow and steady, but it's better to be fast and reliable.
But, that's not the end of the story. The tortoise did some thinking of his own and realized that there was no way he could beat the hare in the way the race was currently formatted. So he thought for a while and then challenged the hare to another race but on a slightly different route. And the hare agreed. So they started off and 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. Now 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.
The moral of the story – First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit your core competency. So in an organization, if you're a good speaker, make sure you create opportunities to give presentations that enable the senior management to take notice of you. If your strength is analysis, do some sort of research and make sure it is sent upstairs. Working to your strengths will not only get you noticed but will also create opportunities, growth and advancement.
But if you thought this was the end of the story, it's not. The hare had some time to think about this. They had now become good friends. Together they thought that they could really run the race better. So they decided to do the race again but to do so as a team. So they started off. But 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 and they reached the finishing line together. They both felt a great sense of satisfaction, more than they had felt earlier.
The 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'll always be situations at which you'll do poorly and someone else will do well.
Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership – letting the person with the relevant core competency in a situation take leadership.
There are many more lessons to be learnt. In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work harder and put in more effort, sometimes it's appropriate to change strategy and try something different and sometimes it is appropriate to do both. When we stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we perform much better.
I want to close with an incident in Coca Cola, when Roberto Goizueta took over as CEO in the 1980s. He was faced with tense competition from Pepsi. They were really eating into Coke's growth. His executives were Pepsi-focused and intent on increasing market share by 0.1% at a time. Roberto decided to do something: to stop competing against Pepsi and instead the situation of 0.1% growth. He asked his executives, "What is the average fluid intake of an American per day?" The answer was 14 ounces. "What was Coke's share of that?" he asked. "2 ounces." Roberto said that Coke needed a larger share of that market. The competition wasn't Pepsi. It was the water, tea, coffee, milk and fruit juices that went into the remaining 12 ounces. The public should reach for a Coke whenever they felt like drinking something. To this end, Coke put up vending machines at every street corner, sales took a quantum jump and Pepsi has never quite caught up.
Working together to change the situation rather than against a rival can have far-reaching consequences. Teamwork is so important. It has to be able to be put to the whole; you cannot be individually brilliant in a team and want the credit. You become a piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit in. teamwork is everybody taking what they have and making the dream work.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God, give us wisdom to know what's our takeaway this morning. Help us to look introspectively at our own lives and see if, by any chance, we are contributing to a team that is less efficient because of our own individual need for either acknowledgement or recognition. Help us to think as teams and help us to make sure that the things we do are done effectively and which allow our respective companies to do well. I pray a blessing on each one on this call. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
• Angela Fernandez Orvitz, "Effective Collaboration in Multi-discciplinary Teams." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsndhCQ5hRY
• "Good Old Lessons in Teamwork from an Age-old Fable: The Tortoise and the Hare." http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDEQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fncr.mae.ufl.edu%2Ffunstuff%2FTeamwork.ppt&ei=CxzJUaj3AYWzrgeMwIHoDA&usg=AFQjCNGIRb5_jOvRvTmXJvoDL_V4jFFTWw
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