Page 111 - Make Work Great

Beginning Your Crystal

the chaos they face in their own jobs, and they’re elated to learn that
the chaos can be managed and successful outputs achieved without a
90-hour workweek.
This particular group was divided into two teams of roughly a dozen
people each. Each team worked within its own version of the simulated
workplace. They started with the same boundary conditions and con-
straints, the same leadership structure (a team leader with a small group of
directors overseeing everyone else), and the same output requirements.
The disparity between the teams was noticeable within the fi rst hour,
and it grew all day. One had confl ict; the other had output. One worked
smoothly and quietly and produced a record result; the other was rife
with disagreement and failed to meet even the most basic output stan-
dard. At the end of the day, the struggling team’s members berated me,
the session, and its goals, while the participants from the successful team
beamed with the notion that their work was about to get better and
thanked me profusely for their newfound insights. As an instructor, it
was a surreal experience: two groups, 10 feet apart in the same room,
giving feedback about what sounded like two entirely different sessions.
What was so different about the teams? It wasn’t membership. Every-
one in the session worked together regularly in the same organization;
they all knew each other already and tended to get along. The two
“teams” were simply the result of a random division of the group; I
knew of no difference between them in overall intelligence, capability,
or job descriptions. I had also discussed the group’s current state and
needs with its leader, and we had agreed the training was appropriate for
everyone. In fact, I had conducted the same training with other members
of the group before (and since) and encountered no similar problems.
What happened? In preparing the two team leaders for their day’s
assignment, I missed a critical detail. As it turned out, the leader of the
team that would ultimately struggle—who was a highly capable worker
in his own sphere—had a strong belief that any workplace simulation
was less important than the pile of work waiting back at his offi ce. He

didn’t mention this specifically, and I didn’t ask about it. Like a good
CEO, I focused on what I wanted him to produce and what he had at
his disposal. Like a good leader, he interacted with me about the topic

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