Team Work or the lack of it.

We all keep talking about the importance of team work and that the group should be in synergy and work towards a common goal. Its not only important in corporate world but also in sports and other group tasks.

Am quoting a real-life example here which was so very ordinary but could turn out to be a bigger lesson than any of the OB chapters.

The other night our group of 7 - Alok, Gaurav, Girish, Mayank, Mohit, Neha and me, had gone for dinner to a restaurant called SEA QUEEN. But even before reaching there we saw glimpses of conflicting individual choices. After eventually deciding on SEA QUEEN and landing there, everyone had their own choices. Some wanted to have 'kofta' while others wanted to have 'mushroom'. There was yet another group who wanted to drink beer and someone who wanted to have weird starters like German Potato Salad. If it was a marketing CASE STUDY, all these could have worked as criteria for segmenting. But we had gone there as one bunch of friends and couldnt understand why no one even wanted to compromise and eat something that everyone could share.

Due to all the arguments, someone suggested to order whatever one wanted. Someone also suggested to form 2 groups of 4 & 3 and order food of their choices. Eventually, in order to please everyone we ended up ordering so much that couldnt eat some of it.

Just remembered the days when our college (DDIT) group of 14 went out to eat. Inspite of being exactly double in size, it always seemed to be in complete harmony. May be after all the work experience, it was the ego that came into the picture and made people make their presence felt by ordering something weird.

But the group is generally insync because each of us work as a seperate entity. Looking forward to another OB lesson on our next dinner outing ;)