67
CHAPTER
8
Teamwork Today?
Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the co-
operation of many minds. I may be given the credit for having
blazed the trail but when I look at the subsequent developments
I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.
—Alexander Graham BellIdeally, teamwork is preferred over solo attempts, with the pos-
sible exception of singular talents like Shakespeare or Leonardo da
Vinci. There is something unique about that level of genius that
suggests collaboration would only dilute the effort. We all know
the phrase: “A camel is a horse designed by a committee.”
Team training workshops, though, frequently feature an exer-
cise that demonstrates the merits of teamwork. Typically the exer-
cise involves a shipwreck on an uninhabited island or a plane crash
in the desert. The participants first plan their rescue alone, picking
items that they think they’ll need from a master list. Then they
pool their intellectual talents and try to solve the rescue problem
together. Invariably the team does better than any one individual
alone, thereby proving once and for all that we should all avoid
sailing or flying. Whoops, wrong conclusion. The correct conclu-
sion from the team exercise is that teamwork provides better so-
lutions than working alone.08-13 ware 67 1/19/01, 1:10 PM