Adventures in India

An example of a working pattern of a highly effective group, which seems to go against all our usual ways of dealing with tasks.

Staying calm and working in a methodical fashion has huge merits, not the least of which is keeping everyone happily working toward the goal without alienating valuable resources.This is an observation that comes up with unfailing regularity o­n outbound management development programmes. Everyone stresses the importance of being nice to each other, staying calm in times of stress, the leader stating tasks clearly and calmly, and all the related glorious ideas.

But do they work? And if they do, how well do they work?

We generally take participants through a series of tasks or objectives to achieve, and discuss the factual observations, to see if we can find scope for improvement. Inevitably, we realize the value of communication, responsible leadership, innovation, result-oriented action, staying calm,….. and all the usual ‘good guys’ Participants succeed or fail at their tasks in pretty much similar ways too and honestly, in about 99% of the programmes, I find very little difference in performance at the beginning and end of the programme.

Is there something we are missing? Is there something wrong in the direction we are taking? Could it be, that we actually need to ban these now meaningless words and find alternative ways of describing observations, requirements and actions?

I have seen some highly efficient teams at work, and notable among those whom I consider excellent learning opportunities, are crew o­n o­ne of my film shoots last year, the team of workers who redecorated my parents house last year, and a couple of others, I don’t mention, because the point is the observations, and not he actual teams.

I found a couple of common factors that are not seen in usual observations and seemed to contribute to exceptional performance.

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Attitude

Neither the film crew, or the carpenters thought of not being o­n time, or the task not being completed as an option. There was a shoot o­n, and the house warming and it was “inevitable”. Not being ready was unthinkable. The o­nly option open from the word go was success. The question that remained was how.

Multi-skilled initiative

People knew their skills and it was very rare to find formal time wasted o­n figuring out who does what in detail. The task was broken into smaller parts, and the people with suitable skills simply started working o­n their bits with others falling into place as and when needed.

Proactive participation

Individuals had a keen eye o­n happenings and were quick to step in whenever needed without elaborate discussions and were sensitive to the task happening to require minimal instructions.

Concise contributions

Suggestions happened, but without much of a drama to it. Concise statements of what actions could be taken to achieve what result, which if taken up by the group, resulted in the passing of the management responsibilities to the contributor, as he briefed them as to the course of action. Nothing happened of the ideas that were dropped. Some questions may be asked and answered, but no time was wasted in proving the rights and wrongs of a path to be dropped anyway.

Impersonal approach

Team members were able to stop thinking in terms of individual goals, actions, and credit, and make a successful shift to thinking for the team and oriented toward the goal, with the stress o­n achievement of goal rather than individuals and their contributions.

Anger

People of authority did lose their temper if they thought that performance was lagging, but the stress was o­n spurring them rather than pointing out faults, and the anger was quick to fade out. It acted as a sharp push which no o­ne took personally because it wasn’t directed at individuals, but actions, or their lack. And authority in this case was not about being senior, but simply being the guy managing the action at the time.

These were teams in action in real life, not o­n a programme simulation, and I found that most of my observations about group discussion and brainstorming, staying calm, group analysis of inputs, etc, were not observed at all, but the speed of work, and their achievement o ftheir target was spectacular to say the least. This leads me to wonder – Is it time for us to consider unconventional and real life oriented solutions to make our training more effective? Don’t we need to go beyond the obvious in our search for learning from experience?

Article by Vidyut

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