VALLEY CROSSING- TEAMWORK EXERCISE

The Valley Crossing Exercise aptly portrays the importance of teamwork in performing any activity, e.g. team formation, team norms, competition, cooperation etc.

This time Dr. Mandi asked us to perform valley crossing  in a group of three. At first I thought it was more of a team building activity, but slowly & gradually I realized the importance of the same.

To understand the task better, let's take a look on the video of valley crossing that was performed by our seniors (IM19 batch)..

OBJECTIVE

There are three people trying to cross a valley. The gap of the valley is in the range of one foot to two feet. Assume that each of them has the same footstep. They have a rod of a convenient size and they have to cross the valley using the rod as a support. Direct jumping is considered fatal assuming the valley is fathomless.

Now we can break up the task into 9 sub tasks:

In various levels of this task the team members needed to consider the following aspects:

Brainstorming : What should be exact position of holding the rod..? such reasoning will definitely help in better performance.

Communication : It meant that the team mates discuss the problem and communicate their issues to the superiors as well as to their peers. They must have a clear understanding of the situation before attempting the task.

Conflicts : Optimizing different opinion and come up with a most feasible solution and come up with one member that should lead the group.

Clearly defined standards : Team members must know what is expected of them individually in quantitative terms and not qualitative and vague terms like "positive attitude" and "high growth", as these words are ambiguous in their meaning.

Commitment : “Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

LESSONS:

TEAM WORK:   The essence of Team Work lies in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of every team member and utilizing them to achieve optimum efficiency.

EFFECTIVE STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION-  Strategy and planning are futile without effective implementation.

TRAINING- Proper training is essential to achieve the desired level of results.

GOAL- There should be a well defined goal and every team member should have absolute clarity about it.

TRUST-  Mutual trust and belief are the foundation of a good team.

LEADERSHIP- Leadership and team work aren’t two separate entities. Collective leadership from the team delivers optimum results.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY- Every team member is accountable and responsible for the job at hand.

INNOVATION- There has to be openness in terms of new ideas and suggestion.