Valley Crossing

"United we stand, Divided we fall" . The value of teamwork has been shown umpteen numbers of time in history. It has enabled man to come out of cages and reach the moon. What a single man cannot achieve individually can be easily achieved working as a team and that to with manifold increase in scale.

Three people have to cross a valley which is more than one step of the member and less than two steps. They have a long rod with sufficient length. They attempt to cross the gap with everyone holding on to the rod. As soon as someone is on the gap, he would hang from the rod and the other two members would take his weight. This way they can cross the gap. Also it must be noted that load distribution was effectively managed.

There are several stages which are  systematically divided to structure the task :-

1st step - All 3 are safe .

2nd step - Front one is Half safe. Middle and Last one is fully  safe

3rd step - Front one is Fully Risky; Middle one and Last one is Fully SAFE

4th step - Front one and middle one are HALF RISKY; Rear one is SAFE

5th step - Front one SAFE: Middle one is Fully Risky; Last one is SAFE.

6th step - Front one and  Middle ones are Fully Safe; Last one is Fully Risky

7th step - Front and Middle one is safe; 

8th step - Last one is half risky

9th step - All three are Safe

Management Lesson learnt

Planning: 

Suppose, we are 3 people. We are provided with a pole and we need to cross the valley. Our 1st step will be to form a Team and formulate the plan. The plan should be focused on how we can leverage our strength as a team. Though, we have already seen the picture, plan was already  out.

Leadership:

In the exercise, each member has the same set of tasks, burdens and responsibilities. But , not every member in the team would take the initiative to go first as the first person is the first risk taker and not everyone in the team would be willing to follow anyone else. Yet, the show has to run and the team has to do its job and this is where a manager comes in.

The Manager is responsible for taking the initiative because he visualizes the goal in his mind. The manager is responsible for the work division, for giving the interdependent roles to the team workers and finally take them all along to achieve the target.

Work Division and Interdependence:

Now, it would not be practical if each role in an organization can be crafted as in the above case with similar risks borne by everyone and expect everyone else to follow the leader thereby satisfying every employee.

Synchronization:

An individual as a team member has to perform his/her task with utmost diligence such that the output of team as a whole should not be affected. This exercise throws light on the concept of smooth execution of individual tasks which in turn would accomplish the complete task perfectly. Any single flaw in execution could result in inapt outcomes. For example in this case, if last person doesn't carry the load appropriately, the first person might fall in very first step.

Unity of Direction:

It is one of the several Principles of Management which is responsible for a sound organisation. It is related to the functioning of departments, or organisation as a whole that avoids duplication of efforts and wastage of resources. Thus, in this valley crossing case, without Unity of direction, Unity of Action is not achievable!!!

Trust: 

As a Team member, we need to trust other team members. In the valley crossing exercise, if all three people do not trust each other, nobody will get ready to hang on pole in the valley with their life at stake. Trust is build over time and as a manager we must ensure to create an environment where one team member can trust other.

Real-time communication:

This is most necessary for the proper coordination between many players as it helps in the maintenance of “Unity of Command” principle.Effective communication is a pre-requisite. There should be a smooth flow of communication even at the time of executing task. As, we saw during activity, assuming the solution to be simple, people didn’t allocate proper time to understand their role clearly. It resulted in bad co-ordination. One person moved one step ahead while other person stood at same place. People were hanging on pole in wrong sequence or at wrong time. Though, Task was finally completed with the help of proper communication at the execution time. There may be possibility that while formulating the plan people are not 100% clear about their role, though they think so. Effective initial communication can avoid this situation and proper communication during task performance will ensure a successful task even if there was some gap at 1st stage.