Crossing a valley with idiots !!

The valley crossing exercise was performed to provide an idea of the concept of teamwork. It may look a bit easy task which can be performed with just a minimal amount of precision. But let me tell you, it involves a lot more than what you may be thinking.

As shown in the figure above , 3 people have to cross the valley which is more than 1 step long but less than 2 steps long. Also they have to carry the rod along with them. At any time all three people will be holding the rod. When the first person will come exactly on the top of the valley, he will be hanging and other 2 will be holding them. Similarly it will happen for the other two people when they will come exactly at the top of the valley.All the three members  have interchanging roles in the completion of the task .If we look closely at the table of the steps of the exercise we would notice that the here friends have equal distribution of risky ,half-risky and no-risky. A big part of this exercise is in the preparation of the exercise. All the movement must be properly synchronous for proper completion of the task. All the three members while crossing the river communicate and coordinate with each other through sound/signal. We also see that the structuring of the Team Roles is very important the completion of the task.

a) Speed of the 3 valley crossers should be synchronized.

b) Real Time Communication should be there among them - where they could communicate to each other how and what steps to be taken while crossing the valley. Also this would help them be on the same platform of thoughts which is of utmost importance in this task.

c) Gap Size between any pair should be same/uniform/equal.

d) Closed Feedback Loop must be present (more or less the same as point b) of Real Time Communication).

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

High Risk 01 times

Half Risks 02 times

Fully Safe 02 times

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

    3)  Communication and feedback is essential while working in a team.

    4)  Every member is indispensable in completing the task.

    5)  There were equal instances when one needed each other.

Lessons Learnt :

1.    Innovation: When a team has gelled and is working effectively with one another, innovation will see an all-time high. It's not surprising to see a link between innovation and a good team.

2.    Trust:  The organization cannot be successful if there is no element of trust in it. As in the case of valley problem, persons can take the risk to cross the valley only since they trust the other two. Similarly for the organization to be successful, managers and workers have to follow the Theory X which tells the people or managers have trust on the other people or employees.

3.    Responsibility: Everybody in the organization is equally responsible, no matter if he/she is the higher manager, manager or the engineer/ worker. One irresponsible person can spoil the entire work chain.

4.    Systems of Excellence: This and many other examples are nothing but system of excellence.
         Excellence = Efficiency X Effectiveness (So both are needed for the system to achieve excellence).