Team Scrabble
February 19, 2009
With all the talk about working in teams, a quick examination of most compensation and recognition systems reveals that it is still individual effort—not teamwork—that gets recognized and rewarded.
With a slight adjustment in attitude, teams could turn this around.
A few months ago, I wrote an article about a former colleague who adapted his company’s traditional review process to focus on team versus individual results. I received several interesting replies to this. The most interesting of these was not related to work, but was centered around a family situation at home.
This person wrote about how his family spent time together playing different types of board games. Of course, most board games are designed to be competitive—with one person winning and the others fighting for second, third, or fourth place.
The game of Scrabble is no exception. This family, however, added an interesting twist to the scoring: instead of each person trying to maximize his or her individual score, the goal was to place the letters on the board in such a way that the family—working as a team—would get the highest possible total score.
What a great way to learn about the value of teamwork—while having fun!
Instead of trying to accomplish everything on your own, try to find opportunities in your organization to leverage the capabilities of your team. In most cases, you’ll accomplish more—and do it more effectively—working in teams than you will working individually.
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