This
was a very intriguing exercise to watch. We actually wanted to do try it at
work but unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to perform it to see what kind
of outcome we would get. I think it
would have most likely come out the same way.
Watching the participates when the narrator was explaining what needed
to happen it interesting to see as they weren’t too sure themselves how it was
going turn out but in the end they were surprised by how fast they were able to
work together to get the end result. And
this was done without communication between participates!
I
think this was a great example of how you can take a very complicated problem
and simplify it with a few simple clear cut rules where everyone can understand
exactly what they are supposed to do. It
seems that the more complicated the task the easier it is for us to follow as
long as there are clear instructions. This
exercise was proof that it can be done.
The doubt was there but once they started moving and keeping track of
their perspective person they found they were able to accomplish what should
have been a difficult task.
The
last question he asked, “What would have happened if we had put one of you in
charge?” got everyone laughing because they knew it would have been chaos and
would have taken much longer than the one minute took. This got me thinking about a retreat we
attended a couple of years ago for all of WW-headquarters. There were 120 people there and we were
broken up into groups by numbers so it was random. There were 4 groups and a team lead was
chosen for each group. I was chosen as
our group lead and was able to pick one person to help me.
The
purpose of the exercise was to come up with a slogan of how we could retain our
students. As a group we decided to do a commercial
titled “We are Worldwide”. Someone
suggested we line up in the shape of a W to represent Worldwide so we were
trying to figure out the best way to line up.
One of my coworkers wanted to help and jumped in and started ordering
everyone to line up and gave all these very confusing instructions and this in
turn made everyone frustrated.
This
was supposed to be a simple exercise and it was becoming very complex very
quickly. I stepped in and got everyone
to quiet down, thanked the coworker for her suggestions and stated that we were
going to walk in and line up in a specific order. This was quickly understood and everyone was
happy except the coworker who didn’t get to do it her way.
So
a simple exercise became very complicated because of too many instructions and
a complex exercise with a few simple instructions became easy to follow and
complete. These examples go to show how
hard we can make something or how easy we can make it when everyone works
together instead against each other. In
regards to strategy it shows that it is better to keep it clear and simple and
try not to put too many people in charge to confuse the problem but also give
the followers the chance to show that they can get things done without having a
boss loom over their shoulder.
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