About Team-Work

One of my clients was kind enough to invite me along to an outdoor - exercise / game based - team building event. I made some interesting observations about team-work worthwhile remembering.

One of the exercises was a little war game. We were so excited with our laser guns that we straight away ran into the battle, only to be wiped out very quickly. We had a youngster in the team, fresh from military service, who told us later that this is not the way it is done in the army.

Ooops! We ‘senior’ guys full of enthusiasm and lack of 'war skills' totally overlooked that we had specialized knowledge in our team, hence got wiped out quickly.

Takeaway:

- When the team has an exciting project it is okay to have a brief discussion first and plan a strategy*.

- Screen carefully if you have specialized knowledge in the team that may be very useful for the team. Don’t overlook anybody. You may get specialized knowledge from a team member that you least expect.

- *from another exercise something else became very obvious. When rolling out your strategy start vigorously, but after a SHORT while have a review. By then, every team-member has gained some experience and nearly everybody could then make some suggestions to improve the strategy.