The jigsaw puzzle called a Team

Insights into team work and management

Cycling is one sport not many associate with in the world, particularly in India perhaps because the game has been riddled with doping over the years. But, this blog does not mind that fact and goes on to declare that the sport is the single biggest example of how teamwork works better than individuals. Usually, a team of cyclists consists of a sprinter, a time trialist, a specialist in cycling in mountain peaks, the three put together as specialists, for say and domestiques. Apart from the cyclists themselves, the team comprises a manager, mechanics, doctors, coaches and a director of sport. If you are wondering about who those domestiques really are, they are professional cyclists themselves whose main job is to protect the specialists from cyclists of rival teams and bring food and water to the specialists when the team is on the road. Not a very happy job, right? The domestiques hardly ever win a flat stage and are supposed to support the specialists in all terrain, flat or mountainous. They are required to have two different set of specialist qualities, essentially but are not the ones who can flex their muscles and let individual glory come into the picture. For, in a cycling team, the specialists are meant to win. That is how it works and for a long time, I was baffled by the psychology behind playing a domestique’s role. Why on earth would anyone want to do that? I have found several reasons since and one of the most convincing ones was witnessed in Stage 18 of Tour de France 2012.

Watch the video of Mark Cavendish’s record equaling sprint win here. After a minute or so in, you will notice that Bradley Wiggins, the yellow jersey man (read the leader of the Tour) sets the pace for Mark Cavendish and their team and moves away. This is a guy who is going to win the tour. Why then should he lead up his teammate and move aside? Mark Cavendish provides the answer in the video. Led further by Edvald Boasson Hagen, another teammate, Cavendish sprints his legs out in a sudden burst of power from nowhere and wins the stage in the last 200m. We are talking about winning a stage of 222 kilometers in the last 200 meters. How is it made possible? Team Work!

 3 Monks and no Water

An old Chinese proverb goes “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 proverb is based on a story of three monks which can be seen here. Basically, in the story, the monks use three different methods to carry water which are outlined below:

·         Method 1: A single monk carrying two buckets of water

·         Method 2: Two monks carrying a single bucket of water

·         Method 3: Three monks working as a team to bring buckets of water

Method 1 is the status quo of sorts with no help available. For a single monk, it is easier to bring two buckets of water on a bamboo stick balanced on his shoulder than a single bucket carried by hand. However, when another monk makes himself available, the first monk initially thinks he would be relieved of his duties. However, this is not meant to be and the two monks together decide to share the load and carry a single bucket of water between them by balancing the bucket at the centre of the stick after initial quarrels giving rise to Method 3. The real problem arises when a third monk shows up. First, both the monks in the scene decide to let the third monk do the work as per Method 1. The third monk tries but then is so tired climbing up the hill that ultimately there is no water available for the monastery. Now, this is not a situation which the flowers on Lord Buddha’s lap or the Lord Himself would fancy. Yet, the monks are oblivious and sit out the rest of the day without water. Until, there is a fire! (If you have not seen the video of the 3 monks, now would be good time to see it!)

Innovation – Necessity’s son!

When the entire monastery is on fire and the monks realize that their livelihood is at stake, the monks naturally fall in line and collaborate to douse the fire. The entire hilltop is divided into three sections, with the monk close to the river filling the bucket and the monk at the top dousing the fire with water in the bucket with the monk in between acting as a liaison between the two. This could have very well happened before but it did not as the monks were thinking on individualistic terms rather than unite as a group and work for the common cause of bringing water for the monastery. When the necessity of dousing the fire came to the fore, individual goals were forgotten for a common goal of dousing the fire. And this, in turn, led to the realization by the monks that bringing water would be much easier if they were to collaborate with each other each day as per Method 3. As they say, two hands are better than one! Just that in this case, the third hand made a lot of difference as well.

Productivity – the buzz word

If you noticed, between Methods 1 & 2, the number of buckets per trip has come down from 2 to 1 and the number of people employed is up from 1 to 2. Method 1, hence, should be more productive right? Well, in plain materialistic terms, Yes! But, one has to remember that the work is not done by robots but by humans. And, we humans are characterized with a certain amount of energy. I think you will agree with the fact that a single monk carrying 2 buckets expends more energy than 2 monks carrying one put together. Again, each monk is different (as the video itself depicts so amicably!) and each monk can expend a different amount of energy illustrated by the fact that the third fat monk ran out of steam going up the hill and drank all the water he carried to refresh himself. Anyway, with 2 monks carrying a bucket, the amount of energy expended per bucket carried would go down. Quite obviously then, Method 2 is more productive than Method 1. It wasn’t productive at all before the 2 monks carrying that single bucket decided to use an objective measure of a scale to equally divide work by resting the bucket at the midpoint of the bamboo stick.

This brings us very nicely to Method 3 and its productivity. Well, each monk had perhaps an equal share of the work up the climb and hence, each monk would have expended an equal amount of energy. But, when it is divided between 3 monks as in Method 3, the productivity of the monks is not the highest. Sure, the monks have time to rest in between till their turn to carry the bucket up or down. But, the stop-start nature of the method does not make it suitable for the worker or for the organization which brings us to Method 4.

Innovate to Excel

The monks could very well be happy with Method 3 and not thought beyond it. But, alas, they were smart! Smart enough to come up Method 4 of using a pulley to carry the water bucket up the hill rather than doing the tough part themselves. With Method 4, they have innovated and excelled in the function of bringing water to the monastery by reducing their own physical effort and by eliminating the human element on the toughest part of the job, the climb! Now, without any doubt, isn’t Method 4 the most productive of all? Certainly, yes! And how has it come about? By Innovation! By working smart and not hard! It is true that the monks did innovate to an extent with the previous 3 Methods. Yet, the innovation was meant for improvement alone and when such a course is followed, the results tend to be stymied to an upper cap. With the drastic innovation of Method 4, the underlying framework was re-written and a new benchmark has been set, a benchmark which has taken the task to a different level of productivity, a level incapable of being attained with the previous methods. You would have heard the phrase "think outside the box" umpteen times and wondered how it is actually done. The above example of coming up with Method 4 is a classic illustration, in my opinion, of thinking outside the box and using a pulley to lift the water bucket up the hill. 

Now, if you were to design roles in an organization, it is quite obvious which method you should opt for. Method 4 makes work seem fun! Why? Because there is a team behind it and no team member is working his socks off to accomplish the task. Each monk has a clear and defined role in the system, much like our cycling team in the Tour de France. In the end, even if a specialist in the cycling team finishes the job, it is because all the domestiques have played their part and contributed to the success of the team. This is the precise reason why in any post-stage interview of Mark Cavendish, you would expect a word of sincere gratitude to his teammates. It would have not been possible without them and Cavendish knows best. That is the mark of a true teammate!