Three idiots Crossing the valley - Teamwork principle

Team Work

"When you score a goal, or hit a three, or get a touchdown, you don't do it for yourself, you do it for the team cause the name in the front of the shirt is more important than the one on the back."  Quote from a movie Miracle

Team work has been defined differently by different schools of thought and different individuals but all of them zero in on one idea that team work involves people working in a group or team to accomplish a given task.

The process of working together with a group of people in order to achieve a goal.The team work is often a crucial part of a business as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying for the best in any circumstances. Team work often means people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflicts between the individual.

Importance of team work

Delegation

A team that works well together understands the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. One of the benefits of strong teamwork in the workplace is that team leaders and members become proficient at dividing up tasks so they are done by the most qualified people. Without strong teamwork, it can be difficult for managers and executives to determine which staff members can best accomplish job tasks.

Efficiency

Work groups and teams develop systems that allow them to complete tasks efficiently and quickly. When a task is handed to a well-trained and efficient team, the team's work pace assures that the task will be completed quickly and accurately. This allows the company to take on more work and generate more revenue without having to add more staff. This becomes helpful when efficient teams from different departments work together. Each team is well aware of its own abilities and the groups can work together effectively as opposed to disjointed groups of employees who may not be familiar with how to work together.

Ideas

Teams in the workplace often meet to discuss how to solve company issues. When a team works well together, it allows staff members to feel more comfortable in offering suggestions. Team members become accustomed to processing brainstorming information, and the company benefits from the variety of suggestions that come from effective teams.

Support

There are challenges each day in any workplace, and a strong team environment can act as a support mechanism for staff members. Work group members can help each other improve their performance and work together toward improving their professional development. Team members also come to rely on each other and trust each other. These bonds can be important when the team faces a particularly difficult challenge or if the group is forced to deal with the loss of a team member while still trying to maintain productivity.

Lets take the example of three people crossing the valley with the wooden block as figure describe

we can observe from the diagram that three people successfully crass the valley without much risk as  they divide the risk and help each other in completing the work, this is possible when they work as a team.

Observation made from the above activity are listed step by step in the following diagram

   

     

      All three members have equal distribution of different kinds of situation :

    High Risk 01 times

    Half Risks 02 times

    Fully Safe 02 times

        All three members have the same role in terms of effort and risk. Nobody was overloaded or relaxed.

        Communication and feedback is essential while working in a team.

        Every member is indispensable in completing the task.

        There were equal instances when one needed each other.

Management Lessons from Three Monks....

Lets first watch the Chinese award winning animated short film "Three Monks" Produced by Shanghai animation studio, After the Cultural Revolution and fall of the political Gang of Four in 1976, the film was one of the first animated film created as part of the rebirth period. It is also referred to as The Three Buddhist Priests.

The film is based on the ancient Chinese proverb "One monk will shoulder two buckets of water; two monks will share the load, but add a third and no one will want to fetch water. The film does not contain any dialogues, allowing it to be watched by any culture, and a different music instrument was used to signify each monk. 
The short film teaches many Management Lessons, lets discuss them in Detail.

Effort: When only one monk lived in the monastery, the effort to fill the buckets of water and bring them back to the monastery was more than the individual effort required to fetch water when two monks were living. When more and more people are added in an organization, the amount of effort per person must reduce and the synergy of all individual efforts must produce the desired results.

Process Improvement for productivity : The first monk, second monk and in the end all the three monks together used different processes to satisfy their needs of water. Every method is full filling the need, But the same method might not be effective in a different case. What a management needs to learn that different tasks need different processes or the same process to be improved over time, if necessary replaced. The primary purpose is to get the task done using the most economical and productive process.
Lets compare the process in some attributes.

Attributes	One Person	Two Person	Three Person
Work Tools	Stick and two bucket	Stick and one bucket	Pulley , rope and two bucket
Effort	Maximum	Lesser than one person	Least
Output	Two Buckets	One bucket	One bucket
Efficiency(Per bucket)	Least	More than one person	Maximum

Active Participation: There is one incident where the two monks measure the length of the stick to hang the barrel, center is measured by one while marking is done by the other. This shows that there is active participation from both the monks to get the work done. A management should strive for such participation because it improves productivity, efficiency and also acts as a motivator.

Team Wok: The importance of working as a team can clearly be learnt from the movie. It was only co-operation and team work that finally helped in saving their monastery from the fire and team work use with the improved process also reduce the efforts and conflict.