It was riveting to see the Chilean miners rescued a few days ago, wasn’t it? People all over the world celebrated this great teamwork success. From the miners themselves, who managed to survive 17 days without any outside help, to the families waiting anxiously at the surface of the earth, it was an amazing story. It took many teammates to bring the longest underground entrapment in human history successfully to an end.
Let’s think about the teamwork required behind the scenes to make this rescue happen. Here are a representative number of folks involved: the Chilean President and government; drilling experts from a dozen countries; the Chilean police at the site; NASA (who provided rich packaged food and designed the rescue capsule); the Chilean Navy (who built the capsule); U.S. companies like Center Rock, Inc., and even Oakley (who provided those cool sunglasses to protect the miners’ eyes as they emerged).
It’s amazing what a seemingly disparate group accomplished in 70 days, isn’t it? I say BRAVO to them all. They accomplished something very important–just ask the children of those mine workers.
It brought to mind the recent disaster in our own country–the oil spill in the Gulf. And I couldn’t help but think about the surprising lack of teamwork that occurred there. In a short time on the internet, I could find many instances of finger-pointing, placing blame, and blocking information. There were very willing teammates (kudos to the citizens who rushed to help clean up the mess), but not much team coordination. It seemed as if every organization was so caught up in their own interests, they forgot they were trying to avert disaster.
Finally, after 3 months, they were able to seal the top of the spewing well. But it took two more months to seal the well permanently. It seems they finally got their team coordinated enough to cross the goal line, but it was way too late. Louisiana and other gulf states will be dealing with this mess for many years to come. There is no one to speak for the millions of waterfowl, sea life, and plants affected, but hopefully the millions of people impacted will continue to remind us what happened and the disastrous affect of this lack of teamwork.
What does effective teamwork look like? In this example, was the difference in actions and how did they affect the success of the task at hand? To me, it’s clear. Teams who have a common goal and work tirelessly toward it will succeed, and as quickly as possible. Teams who have diverging goals may be successful, but at what cost?
What do you think of this comparison? I’d love to hear your feedback about teamwork and how it plays out in real life.
I read something very much the same to this post over at google news… I was intrigued and started looking around, and then landed at this page… anyhow, I think that I somewhat agree with what you discuss here. However I’m going to go see what additional information I can look up too.
Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!