TEAM- BUILDING

Ameya, my grandson, came calling on Sunday, last. He is in his primary school , and is quite a brilliant student. As is wont with granddads, I fielded my icebreaker,
“ Ameya, now that you have learnt additions, could you please give me, a quick answer of a simple sum?. One plus one?”
“One.” pat came the reply.
I dismissed it first, as the modern mathematics they teach at schools these days. I am as enlightened about it, as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
To mask my ignorance, I asked him for a quick logical explanation of his answer.
“Elementary, Dr Watson”, was his tone. In fact, he said,
“You see the rain drop on the window-pane? Now, watch it approach another one. Both form into a bigger, ONE.”
I was stunned by the genius in him.
Was he conveying some message that, merging one’s self, for a larger goal is the key to success; a nature’s lesson?

TEAM WORKING

Well-formed teams achieve spectacular success, when they act
monolithically.
Albert Einstein had posed a question to the young engineers, when he went visiting a college. It goes something like this:
‘While walking on seashore you find it very difficult to walk on the dry sand, unless you have hoofs like horses, camels or donkeys. Thereafter walking towards the seawater you encounter damp sand. You walk with greater ease, as if on a normal ground. Einstein’s question:
” Give a scientific explanation for the fact that it is easier to walk on the damp sand. No, no; don’t give the wishy washy poetic descriptions. Point out the phenomenon behind this occurrence.”
Most recalled the happening vividly, but few could offer the scientific reason; which is “SURFACE TENSION.”
A natural bonding, which occurs between two droplets of water, holds the sand pieces together, on damp sand. When there is no dampness on the dry sand, it is slippery.

Ah! A great principle, but perhaps beyond the comprehension of my little genius, AMEYA.
In fact the two molecules of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen, just by bringing together, won’t form into water. A conducive relationship, has to be conditioned, by a process of ionization, a charge has to be created before the molecules will form into a new entity, water.

SUCCESS OF TEAMS

In human activity system too, unless a conducive and complementary relationship is created, disparate individuals don’t bond together into great teams.
Best performing teams; achieve their goals only through a conscious process of integration. The building blocks of today’s corporate success are better performing teams, which act as a single entity. They are bound together by a common cause, a mission to perform to the best of their individual and team abilities.

WHY TEAMS.

When a single individual cannot perform a task, one resorts to a team formation to take on the same. The total task is broken down into sub-tasks; the work is allocated depending on the specialties and capabilities of the team members. Complementary roles are assigned, role clarity is established. The leader ensures that the team skills are developed and the morale of the team is kept constantly high.

In some cases the team members do work independent of each other. But there has to be a leader who coordinates the activities of the members of the team, after he has viewed the task, in its totality. He has to break it down to various activities, and allocate the individual tasks. The manufacture of a mobike- engine, will involve making of different parts, and finally the assembly. The manufacture of constituent parts of the total assembly could be an independent activity, coordinated and monitored by the leader.

MATURE TEAMS

In some cases the work is such, that it has to have a greater inter-dependence. Then aligning the jobs of the individuals to ensure that the total job is completed is a supreme need. A family is a good example of an interdependent, effective team.
The roles of the individual members of the family are interdependent and complementary. Each member of the TEAM- “FAMILY” has a role to play and when it is done well, the outcome is a happy family.

Mature teams, have a built-in passion for improvement, they share common aspirations, set out an agenda, for completion of the team
Task.

DIFFERENT LEVELS

Various teams operate at different levels.
There is a team working at the operating level, that will concentrate on the immediate tasks on hand.
However the middle management team will concentrate on mediate goals. They will look to the future of say, next two years or so.
The highest level of management will have to envision the future and work at a conceptual level. The job involves cognition of the concepts and translating policies into action-plans. A road map has to be set for the team to operate, which is the task at the highest level.

THE NATIONAL LEVEL

There were two fishermen fishing in a rivulet on either side of her banks.
The rivulet separated two distinct ideologies, practiced during the cold- war, regime. On the eastern side of the river there was the communist regime, of East Germany and on the western banks, it was the West German, a liberal capitalist regime.
Since morning the fishing was going on patiently.
The German on the eastern side of the river was not getting any fish at all. The German on the western side was getting heaps of fish, and was busy pulling the line and fixing bait on the hook continuously.
“Herr Schultz, what is the bait you have put on the hook? “ Comrade Schmitz asked.
“I am using the canned worms.” Herr Schultz.
“Me too, but I am getting no fish on the line.” Comrade grumbled.
Herr Schultz offered an explanation,
“Comrade, on your side of the river, the fish are afraid to open their mouth.”
This was prior to Mikhail Gorbachov’s understanding of the problems in USSR. He embarked on two distinct policies. One glasnost, an openness; and the other perestroika, or, restructuring.
Unless openness is brought in the team operations by a restructuring, the teams will not, operate successfully, at the national level.

SYNERGY

When you have a muscle pull, like many of the cricketers have; these days; in South Africa fixtures; you are in acute pain.
To relieve the pain one takes a painkiller and to relax the pulled muscle a relaxant.
One expects; say, one unit of relief from the painkiller and another unit from the relaxant. Under normal circumstances, a total of two units of relief. Right?
No, sir.
If the medicines are working synergistically you can expect a relief of more than two units and if they are canceling each other’s efficacy you may get zero relief.
Synergy is a word replete with meaning. A very telling one.
Syn means together, ergy stands for work .If the two disparate entities are WORKING TOGETHER; they will produce results, which are equivalent to more than the arithmetic sum of the constituents.
Great is in it?
So it could be; that one plus one will be more than two, may be eleven or one hundred and eleven
The same principle holds good for synergistically working teams. You can reap benefits disproportionately higher than the efforts put in, by you to build great teams.

My little genius AMEYA has to be TAUGHT the new mathematics, one plus one can be ONE, yes; it is a precondition to forming a performing team. But in mature teams it can be much more than TWO too.

M. S. Ranade,
mranade@vsnl.com
PUBLISHED IN INDIAN EXPRESS, ON THURSDAY, 13TH MARCH, 2003 APPOINTMENTS SUPPLEMENT, PAGE ONE.

“ACQUISITION OF NEW KNOWLEDGE”

A politician came calling on me, about five years back, as a part of his, cyclic five yearly- election campaign. He had his sten-gun toting guard in tow, and was very prominently parading a new gizmo that he had acquired just then.
”That is a cell-phone,” he explained to me.
I politely explained to him that we keep the same in pocket and it works there from too. There was no need to hold it in the hand like a scepter, all the while.
Much later though, I realized his predicament, when he received a call. He was not comfortable at all accepting it. He was struggling, with the buttons. He was visibly embarrassed.
A rare phenomenon in his species.

This was just about five years ago. Now you notice every other person having a cell-phone and using it as if it were an extension of the arm.
No big deal.
In the earlier era, the pace, speed and reach of technological changes was slow. Engineering colleges were teaching with the help of a sectional model of 450 rpm,” I. C. engines”, to their wide-eyed wards, for more than four generations. Nothing was changing radically.
The technology is advancing rapidly. The frequency and urgency of updating one’s knowledge is unprecedented in the wired world that we live in today.
There are certain well-accepted processes of acquiring,
“NEW KNOWLEDGE “.

The basic idea is to reflect on the new knowledge, with a view to understanding it and integrating the same with the one already known to you. If one adopts this method then the acquisition of new knowledge becomes easier and lasting.
Taking the same example of the cell phone, if; I were to teach my politician friend the modalities, I will first explain to him with the help of; a chord-less phone, at his residence, the similarities.
He is comfortable with the known device. After that he has to focus his attention on the changes involved. This is known as the first step,
• SELECTION.

• REHEARSE the same, by keeping the cell phone in his working memory, actively, and focus on the differences.

• MEANINGFUL LEARNING is the next stage. This involves relating it to the context one knows, and then understanding the dissimilarities.
• INTERNALLY ORGANIZING, the new learning and in depth absorbing of the wireless telephony, follows. This signals the subordinate concepts such as forwarding the calls, recalling, registering, storing, deleting etc.
• ELABORATING THE NEW KNOWLEDGE, by now relating it to the one earlier known
• TO VISUALIZE the new knowledge, mentally and to go away from the cordless-phone model is the last step.
• Accept the new technology, as it is. Leave the walker of the chord-less phone now.
He is now ready to tackle the SMS, WAP technology etc., too, which is application of the new knowledge and enriching it further.

What is true about, the cell phone is true in many other cases.
For example many of us use the computer, still in the mode of a typewriter. The finer points are left alone unutilized.
How do you acquire the new knowledge?
Systematically go about it as detailed above and you will have made the new knowledge as a part of you.
One need not have to think of the typewriter, to accept the new technology of voice-activated computers, transmitting voice data etc. Leave QWERTY, now and take the stride.
That is the route to “new- knowledge’s”, acceptance and acquisition.

M.S. RANADE.
mranade@vsnl.com
PUBLISHED IN INDIAN EXPRESS PUNE EDITION, THURSDAY, 8TH MAY 2003.