One Team Concept!!

Many methodologies have evolved in the past decade - DevOps, DevSecOps, SecOps, AppOps, NoOps!! Each of these methodologies define new ways of working. To embrace this change, it is important that our people understand the need and become accountable for this change. Today organizations are spending time and effort in mentoring teams and making them effective. A lot of focus is made on the "ONE TEAM" concept - "We Build, We Run!!". I strongly believe in this thought process and recommend this to many of my customers. The biggest challenge today is how to enable People, Our Teams on this journey.

As I talk about this concept, I could relate this topic with one of the incidents shown in a recent Hindi movie called "Gold".

The movie talks about the journey of how the Indian Hockey team wins an Olympic Gold in 1948. The story beautifully illustrates the essence of the "ONE TEAM" concept which was made possible by the coach or rather I would call it as the mentor. So, back to the story, the Indian Hockey team is formed with players from across the country coming from different cultural backgrounds. Initially there are no issues observed when this new team is formed and they all agree to win Gold for the Nation. But as time passes, the mentor observes issues between the team members - they have cultural issues, groupism issues, ego issues, etc. One fine day at the playground, the coach asks all the team members to pick up bricks from one side of the ground and drop them at the opposite side of the ground, keeping in mind that only one brick is picked at a time per member. The members full of energy individually pick up bricks from one side of the ground, run towards the opposite side and drop the brick there and return to pickup the next brick. The team finishes this job in a couple of minutes and returns happily back to the coach. The mentor/coach asks them to repeat the same again and drop the bricks back to their original location. The team follows the mentioned instructions and returns but this time they were tired. The mentor/coach asks them to repeat this task again... Uff!! The team was worried and surprised as to what type of training is this. They stopped for a while and discussed as to what is going wrong .. they have to follow the mentor's/coach's instructions but they were tired. So, now they decided that instead of contributing individually, they will now contribute as a team. They formed a line starting from the location from where the bricks had to be picked up till the destination point where the bricks had to be dropped. The first member in the line picks up the brick and hands it over to the next member and this done till it is dropped at the opposite end by the last member in the line. This process is repeated and it becomes a fun activity for the team. Voila!! The task is completed well with no-one tired or frustrated. It actually brought in a sense of togetherness within the team and they were happy. The mentor/coach looked at them and said that this is how a team should function - "Rising to Win", "Working as One Team".

Isn't this interesting!! This was something in 1948 and it matches to our New World of Thinking. A good coach, a sense of togetherness, sharing common goals, effective communication & collaboration - all these are the ingredients for defining new ways of working - mentoring the concept of One Team. And yes there is no "I" in the team, just "We" :)