Recently I had lunch with a retired U.S.Marines veteran with more than 28 years of experience (LinkedIn: Joseph Brennan). The topic of teamwork came up, and he talked about what it means to be a team on the military:
Teamwork / 2007 / SML Notebook, originally uploaded by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML.
- Same ability. The military trains its soldiers to possess the same skills as everyone else, such that when one falls down in the field, another soldier can carry on the same tasks.
- Same knowledge. To maximize the efficiency of communication, every soldier in the field have access to the latest information regarding the battlefield.
- Interpret instructions the same way. Authorizations (the briefs) are always written in a clean and clear manner such that the action carried out will be the same regardless of the person asked to carry out the instructions. In a war scenario, when the person given those instructions dies, the next person given those instructions ought to be carrying out the same actions
- Efficiency of the team depends largely on the team members having the same knowledge, speed and strength. To do so, they need access to the same information
- The team can be as soon as its weakest member.
- To evaluate performance of teamwork, take out half of the team and evaluate the length of time that team can still survive given the same condition
- The military does not create specialists.
If we are to apply these methodologies into the business world, it will look something like this:
- Everyone working at the same company ought to have the same level of knowledge related to works done by the company
- In this ideology, designers should know how to write programs, and programmers ought to know design principals
- Efficiency of the work force will be greatly enhanced if every bit of information is shared among the team
- New acquired knowledge will be shared among all members of the force through either corporate emails or blogs.
- When you can get everyone to have a working style that has almost the assemblance of a single person (hive mind), projects will be much easier to handle
Related SML Universe
SML Notebook: Teamwork / 2007 / SML Notebook
SML Flickr: Teamwork / 2007 / SML Notebook
This post needs some tweaking
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While I know that military experience is much valued by the business community in general, and has much to offer, I am not sure about all your examples, See-Ming.
ReplyDelete* Everyone working at the same company ought to have the same level of knowledge related to works done by the company
> This doesn't seem right to me. People who are earlier in their career by necessity have less experience and probably less knowledge about what works and doesn't. Plus people have different tasks to do. I think definitely team members should be well aware of what others are doing, and that more senior people need to understand and direct what less senior people are doing, but that's about as far as it can go.
* In this ideology, designers should know how to write programs, and programmers ought to know design principals
> This is a lot more valid, I think. It would be better if designers had at least a rudimentary knowledge of how their design will be coded, and the implication of that, and vice-versa. Plus everyone should understand at least the principles of good user expereince. The 37signals guy seem to do this very well, and in their case it seems to result in lighter, more purposeful pages.
* Efficiency of the work force will be greatly enhanced if every bit of information is shared among the team
> I would insert the word "relevant" before information. Part of the problem these days is that people are deluged with information and have to develop tools to manage their intake of it. This is partially their own fault, of course, but I like to think I am sensitive to the amount of information I am putting into someone's inbox.
* New acquired knowledge will be shared among all members of the force through either corporate emails or blogs.
> A good idea as far as it goes, but there is a very important filter: who will find this relevant, and how much am I inconveniencing people who won't? Of course major decisions and policies could be rapidly disseminated this way.
* When you can get everyone to have a working style that has almost the assemblance of a single person (hive mind), projects will be much easier to handle
> I would say more that if you can get people to use the same tools the same ways this will work (or is that what you're saying in the first place?). Different perspectives, though, is why we hire people with different skills and it's important to remember this.