“The bridges that you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren't there.”
- Gene Brown
The above quote roughly means: barriers that are physical are reflections of the mental ones. There is an important organizational lesson to be learnt in this. Organizations are meant to facilitate the impossible, unachievable. The recipe is simple: Believe that it can be achieved, plan and deliver.
In one of my previous blogs, I made a mention of the Crossing the Valley exercise, in which three individuals wanted to cross a valley wider than the individuals. While they achieve their target, we shall try to learn a concept or two from what they did.
Let us try to define the problem first:
No of people: 3
Valley gap: 2 footsteps
The three individuals plan to cross it. The only prop they have got is a firm rod-like structure, sufficiency long.
Solution:
They hold the rod together with the gap between each two of them is one footstep and they simply walk by. The picture below demonstrates it. Surprised? Does going get this easy? Well, I shall take you through a small dry run to answer that:
L1 L2 L3_______ Step 1: All safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 2: Person 3 half safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 3: Person 3 full unsafe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 4: Person 2 and 3 partially safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 5: Person 2 fully unsafe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 6: Person 1 and 2 partially safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 7: Person 1 fully unsafe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 8: Person 1 partially safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 9: Everyone is safe
R1 R2 R3
The '_______' like structure indicates the valley and Li and Ri denotes the left and right foot of the ith person.
Last year we conducted a simulation of this process in NITIE. Here are the glimpses of how it was conducted:
The steps, no matter how simple they seem, do contain a number of valuable lessons to be learnt:
Load Distribution: the load of each person is reasonably reduced as they organized and devised the mechanism together. Organizations are actually meant to reduce loads. What might seem as a cumbersome task for individuals, organizations are supposed to do them with ease. The system above is a perfect specimen.
Simple Design: The beauty of the system lies in its simple design.
Uniformity of roles: Similar roles for all 3 individuals. There is no differentiation among person 1, 2 and 3. In fact their tasks are designed to be easier, lighter, clearer and more systematic. The members of the group are equally responsible for their contribution to the overall task completion. The amount of risk is also equally distributed among them.
Need of Communication: For the successful completion of the task, it is very important to have proper communication and feedback mechanism among th 3 members. In fact, the feedback mechanism is instantaneous and hence of paramount importance.
Training: There has to be a proper synchronization among the members. Moreover, they need to interact methodically. This requirement leads us to the importance of one very important aspect - training. Organizations even with exceptionally well design will fail if its members are not trained properly. We did a dry run of this system in our classroom. At that time, we felt the need of proper communication training and thus, establishment of synchronization among the 3 persons.
Interdependent Roles: The roles are assigned ina way that every individual is dependent on everyone else for the successful completion of the task. An organization must have such a well-built system that no individual can loaf around. It is often because of weakly designed systems that employees get infected by negative work culture.
Well-specified problem statement: A very important observation is that the problem has been defined properly so that it can be acted upon likewise. The gap, the length of the rod and the gap between each two person are all well specified.
Neo-classical Tool of Management: This simple demonstration actually leads us to some wonderful concepts of neo-classical management. Unlike classical theory of management, wherein the roles are delegated in a pyramid-like manner as to ensure unity of command, neo-classical theory speaks about empowerment of the employees. Here underlies the concept of matrix structures of organizations, where the groups are self-managed and everyone is capable of making decisions. To explain this, I would give an example of a circus, wherein every performer is actually making commands, taking ad-hoc feedbacks and still managing to create a coordinated excellent show. So this simple experiment opens up a far wider dimension to ponder upon.
Many more concepts might be realized from this demonstration. I tried to summarize my observations. I'll be interested in knowing your thoughts also.
Before concluding, I would like to pose an intriguing angle to this experiment.
What exactly is the scope of this experiment? Is it limited to a gap only 2 steps wide? Can we cross any length of a gap by following the same mechanism? What modifications do we need to do, if it is at all possible?
There were two claims made in the class:
A) The distance between the edges (Gap) can be as much as one wants.
B) Any distance can be covered by only 3 individuals in the team.
To substantiate the claim made above there is a small PPT i have created. Please follow the link given below.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=1a_UAYA2QzefvYo4c4nge4s0EwbEXcq6VeYrnbcdFSiKhi4BPRa2Zo8MnS9Wp
Lessons Regarding :-
1) The ideal mode of communication
2) Organizational planning
(Distribution of authority)
3) Risk mitigation for team building shall be discussed here with help of the experiment discussed.
The Gap between the three Persons involved in the activity and the gap between the edges are directly related, The realtion being that the gap between the people involved in the activity plus one standard step length has to be more than the gap between the edges.
If we give them numbers in order they cross the Gap then what are the commonalities and differences of a typical No1,2 & 3
Commonalities :
1) Trust on the team and self : The entire task is dependent on trust. The ideal line of thought in this case should be " I am the part of the team, so trust amongst the members is MY RESPONSIBILITY"
2) Discipline : Its very important that the team walks on the same bit. Every one should have a same rate of walking with each step taken at the same time. A quintessentially military practice of shouting LEFT-RIGHT might come to good use for this purpose.
Differences:
Its important to note that No.1 is the first person to cross the gap, when no one before and in his prior knowledge would have done the same thing. In such a case, its the quality of leader of walking the un-trespassed ways that comes into play. The guy walking in the front must be a visionary himself or must have complete belief in who ever he thinks has envisioned the solution.
The role of management he is to INSTILL THIS FAITH, without explicitly ordering to do anything, implicitly and through the virtue of its BEHAVIOR does a management accomplish this.
This blog is about the lesson learnt about teamwork through a valley crossing exercise. In this case there is a valley which cannot be crossed by an individual alone because it is 2 steps wide. Now the exercise shows how if 3 people come together and a pole of sufficient length is provided using innovative thinking all 3 people can cross the valley.
So the situation is a very simple demonstration of what organizations do, they form a group of individuals to attain goals beyond the reach of any one person and to attain that they need resources (here a pole) and innovative thinking.
But this is not all only having a team and resources is not enough to be a successful organization there are many more things which need to fall in place to attain success. What these parameters are I learnt through a simple valley crossing exercise and would share those learning with you in this post.
Learning:
1) Simplicity of Design
First thing to notice here is that how a very complex problem has been simplified. Because of this simplification what would otherwise have been a daunting problem seems quite possible now. Hence it is very important for a manager to simplify a problem as much as possible because it gives confidence to the team on its achievability. Many modern organizations like Apple and Philips are highly successful because of simplicity i design and usage of their products.
2) Goal Statement
It is necessary to have a goal statement because it provides a sense of purpose and existence to the stakeholders. Here the goal statement is clearly defined as “Crossing the Valley” so all team members are focussed and using their energy in attainment of that purpose. Some organization define their purposes vaguely and employees in such organization are found to be hard working but not unified or scattered in means to achieve their goals.
3) Load Distribution
In an organization it is important that all employees are on equal footing and equally responsible for the optimum performance of the company. This would ensure that pride and ego issues do not creep up. In the example all three persons are equally responsible and hence work as a team to attain the goal.
4) Unity of Direction
It means that all people and department in an organization should be clear about the way they want to achieve the set goal. This is important to prevent any undue wastage of organizations energy and resources on unimportant or unrelated activities.
5) Innovative Thinking
Innovation is at the heart for long term sustainability of any organization more so in contemporary world where technology is causing sweeping changes in people’s priority and preferences. In the Valley Crossing Example the team showed innovation by finding out a method to cross the valley, organizations are supposed to find out innovative solutions for the problems that the world faces, Khan Academy is one such organization about which we discussed in one of my earlier posts.
6) Trust and dependability
Organization is a group of people and for them to work together in an effective manner it is indispensible without trust and dependability. In the current example all member of the team are in danger of falling in the valley at such situation it is the trust and dependability which pushes them to go through. It is important for a manager to foster trust and dependability among his team members to attain great results.
7) Proper Communication
Inefficient communication in an organization can lead to disastrous results such as delayed delivery, poor quality such incidents can lead to public embarrassment and even loss of order for the company. In the Valley Crossing Example the need for proper communication between the team is evident, if there is improper communication it can lead to loss of life.
8) Synchronization
Synchronization is the sequence of events which are to be followed together or one after the other. In the valley crossing example there has to be complete synchronization between the steps of the team to ensure that the gap between them does not reduce or increase as it has to be maintained according to the width of the valley. Similarly for managers it is important to let their team know the time frame in which a certain task has to be completed and accordingly when related activities should be completed by employees.
9) Training
Last but one of the most important aspects is training your employees. Without proper training an average employee cannot become good and a good employee cannot be great. Imagine if the team members in the valley crossing exercise were asked to cross the valley without practice and training. They would have been low on self confidence and most probably they would have failed in the task. This is a important message for managers sometimes in our usual daily routine we don’t see the need for training the employees fearing loss of productivity for that period but this situation is detrimental in long term for overall growth of organization and employee, who after some time would feel no growth in personal and professional life.
Next post coming up soon. Hope you are enjoying and reaping the fruits of learning.
- Gene Brown
The above quote roughly means: barriers that are physical are reflections of the mental ones. There is an important organizational lesson to be learnt in this. Organizations are meant to facilitate the impossible, unachievable. The recipe is simple: Believe that it can be achieved, plan and deliver.
In one of my previous blogs, I made a mention of the Crossing the Valley exercise, in which three individuals wanted to cross a valley wider than the individuals. While they achieve their target, we shall try to learn a concept or two from what they did.
Let us try to define the problem first:
No of people: 3
Valley gap: 2 footsteps
The three individuals plan to cross it. The only prop they have got is a firm rod-like structure, sufficiency long.
Solution:
They hold the rod together with the gap between each two of them is one footstep and they simply walk by. The picture below demonstrates it. Surprised? Does going get this easy? Well, I shall take you through a small dry run to answer that:
L1 L2 L3_______ Step 1: All safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 2: Person 3 half safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 3: Person 3 full unsafe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 4: Person 2 and 3 partially safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 5: Person 2 fully unsafe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 6: Person 1 and 2 partially safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 7: Person 1 fully unsafe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 8: Person 1 partially safe
R1 R2 R3
L1 L2 L3 Step 9: Everyone is safe
R1 R2 R3
The '_______' like structure indicates the valley and Li and Ri denotes the left and right foot of the ith person.
Last year we conducted a simulation of this process in NITIE. Here are the glimpses of how it was conducted:
The steps, no matter how simple they seem, do contain a number of valuable lessons to be learnt:
Load Distribution: the load of each person is reasonably reduced as they organized and devised the mechanism together. Organizations are actually meant to reduce loads. What might seem as a cumbersome task for individuals, organizations are supposed to do them with ease. The system above is a perfect specimen.
Simple Design: The beauty of the system lies in its simple design.
Uniformity of roles: Similar roles for all 3 individuals. There is no differentiation among person 1, 2 and 3. In fact their tasks are designed to be easier, lighter, clearer and more systematic. The members of the group are equally responsible for their contribution to the overall task completion. The amount of risk is also equally distributed among them.
Need of Communication: For the successful completion of the task, it is very important to have proper communication and feedback mechanism among th 3 members. In fact, the feedback mechanism is instantaneous and hence of paramount importance.
Training: There has to be a proper synchronization among the members. Moreover, they need to interact methodically. This requirement leads us to the importance of one very important aspect - training. Organizations even with exceptionally well design will fail if its members are not trained properly. We did a dry run of this system in our classroom. At that time, we felt the need of proper communication training and thus, establishment of synchronization among the 3 persons.
Interdependent Roles: The roles are assigned ina way that every individual is dependent on everyone else for the successful completion of the task. An organization must have such a well-built system that no individual can loaf around. It is often because of weakly designed systems that employees get infected by negative work culture.
Well-specified problem statement: A very important observation is that the problem has been defined properly so that it can be acted upon likewise. The gap, the length of the rod and the gap between each two person are all well specified.
Neo-classical Tool of Management: This simple demonstration actually leads us to some wonderful concepts of neo-classical management. Unlike classical theory of management, wherein the roles are delegated in a pyramid-like manner as to ensure unity of command, neo-classical theory speaks about empowerment of the employees. Here underlies the concept of matrix structures of organizations, where the groups are self-managed and everyone is capable of making decisions. To explain this, I would give an example of a circus, wherein every performer is actually making commands, taking ad-hoc feedbacks and still managing to create a coordinated excellent show. So this simple experiment opens up a far wider dimension to ponder upon.
Many more concepts might be realized from this demonstration. I tried to summarize my observations. I'll be interested in knowing your thoughts also.
Before concluding, I would like to pose an intriguing angle to this experiment.
What exactly is the scope of this experiment? Is it limited to a gap only 2 steps wide? Can we cross any length of a gap by following the same mechanism? What modifications do we need to do, if it is at all possible?
There were two claims made in the class:
A) The distance between the edges (Gap) can be as much as one wants.
B) Any distance can be covered by only 3 individuals in the team.
To substantiate the claim made above there is a small PPT i have created. Please follow the link given below.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=1a_UAYA2QzefvYo4c4nge4s0EwbEXcq6VeYrnbcdFSiKhi4BPRa2Zo8MnS9Wp
Lessons Regarding :-
1) The ideal mode of communication
2) Organizational planning
(Distribution of authority)
3) Risk mitigation for team building shall be discussed here with help of the experiment discussed.
The Gap between the three Persons involved in the activity and the gap between the edges are directly related, The realtion being that the gap between the people involved in the activity plus one standard step length has to be more than the gap between the edges.
If we give them numbers in order they cross the Gap then what are the commonalities and differences of a typical No1,2 & 3
Commonalities :
1) Trust on the team and self : The entire task is dependent on trust. The ideal line of thought in this case should be " I am the part of the team, so trust amongst the members is MY RESPONSIBILITY"
2) Discipline : Its very important that the team walks on the same bit. Every one should have a same rate of walking with each step taken at the same time. A quintessentially military practice of shouting LEFT-RIGHT might come to good use for this purpose.
Differences:
Its important to note that No.1 is the first person to cross the gap, when no one before and in his prior knowledge would have done the same thing. In such a case, its the quality of leader of walking the un-trespassed ways that comes into play. The guy walking in the front must be a visionary himself or must have complete belief in who ever he thinks has envisioned the solution.
The role of management he is to INSTILL THIS FAITH, without explicitly ordering to do anything, implicitly and through the virtue of its BEHAVIOR does a management accomplish this.
This blog is about the lesson learnt about teamwork through a valley crossing exercise. In this case there is a valley which cannot be crossed by an individual alone because it is 2 steps wide. Now the exercise shows how if 3 people come together and a pole of sufficient length is provided using innovative thinking all 3 people can cross the valley.
So the situation is a very simple demonstration of what organizations do, they form a group of individuals to attain goals beyond the reach of any one person and to attain that they need resources (here a pole) and innovative thinking.
But this is not all only having a team and resources is not enough to be a successful organization there are many more things which need to fall in place to attain success. What these parameters are I learnt through a simple valley crossing exercise and would share those learning with you in this post.
Learning:
1) Simplicity of Design
First thing to notice here is that how a very complex problem has been simplified. Because of this simplification what would otherwise have been a daunting problem seems quite possible now. Hence it is very important for a manager to simplify a problem as much as possible because it gives confidence to the team on its achievability. Many modern organizations like Apple and Philips are highly successful because of simplicity i design and usage of their products.
2) Goal Statement
It is necessary to have a goal statement because it provides a sense of purpose and existence to the stakeholders. Here the goal statement is clearly defined as “Crossing the Valley” so all team members are focussed and using their energy in attainment of that purpose. Some organization define their purposes vaguely and employees in such organization are found to be hard working but not unified or scattered in means to achieve their goals.
3) Load Distribution
In an organization it is important that all employees are on equal footing and equally responsible for the optimum performance of the company. This would ensure that pride and ego issues do not creep up. In the example all three persons are equally responsible and hence work as a team to attain the goal.
4) Unity of Direction
It means that all people and department in an organization should be clear about the way they want to achieve the set goal. This is important to prevent any undue wastage of organizations energy and resources on unimportant or unrelated activities.
5) Innovative Thinking
Innovation is at the heart for long term sustainability of any organization more so in contemporary world where technology is causing sweeping changes in people’s priority and preferences. In the Valley Crossing Example the team showed innovation by finding out a method to cross the valley, organizations are supposed to find out innovative solutions for the problems that the world faces, Khan Academy is one such organization about which we discussed in one of my earlier posts.
6) Trust and dependability
Organization is a group of people and for them to work together in an effective manner it is indispensible without trust and dependability. In the current example all member of the team are in danger of falling in the valley at such situation it is the trust and dependability which pushes them to go through. It is important for a manager to foster trust and dependability among his team members to attain great results.
7) Proper Communication
Inefficient communication in an organization can lead to disastrous results such as delayed delivery, poor quality such incidents can lead to public embarrassment and even loss of order for the company. In the Valley Crossing Example the need for proper communication between the team is evident, if there is improper communication it can lead to loss of life.
8) Synchronization
Synchronization is the sequence of events which are to be followed together or one after the other. In the valley crossing example there has to be complete synchronization between the steps of the team to ensure that the gap between them does not reduce or increase as it has to be maintained according to the width of the valley. Similarly for managers it is important to let their team know the time frame in which a certain task has to be completed and accordingly when related activities should be completed by employees.
9) Training
Last but one of the most important aspects is training your employees. Without proper training an average employee cannot become good and a good employee cannot be great. Imagine if the team members in the valley crossing exercise were asked to cross the valley without practice and training. They would have been low on self confidence and most probably they would have failed in the task. This is a important message for managers sometimes in our usual daily routine we don’t see the need for training the employees fearing loss of productivity for that period but this situation is detrimental in long term for overall growth of organization and employee, who after some time would feel no growth in personal and professional life.
Next post coming up soon. Hope you are enjoying and reaping the fruits of learning.
Look guys, I'm flying!
