When I think of large coordinated efforts such as military operations, space exploration and even college curricula, I am impressed at what teamwork can do.
There is a recent TED talk by Atul Gawande, a surgeon and professor of medicine at Harvard, in which he explains that medicine has progressed to the point where individual effort is insufficient and more teamwork is essential. He mentions "pit crews" like those that change tires and do other maintenance in very short time in a NASCAR race and puts such teamwork out as a model for medicine.
He says,
"Well, we've now discovered 4,000 medical and surgical procedures. We've discovered 6,000 drugs that I'm now licensed to prescribe." He explains the need for checklists, the subject of one of his recent books, to verify that all the important steps in a medical procedure, especially those frequently overlooked, have been taken.
From about 1920 on, Bell Labs and others relied on the work of Walter Shewhart and later on such people as W.E. Deming and Joseph Juran to work out the concepts and mathematics of very high quality manufacturing. In the 1980's and since, many of the same ideas have been applied to other sorts of teamwork, such as administration of large organizations.
More and more people are getting trained in "Six Sigmas", quality circles and related approaches that aim to make very few errors in a large team effort. Some Asian companies have reported such enthusiasm for improving quality and driving error rates toward zero that they have had to demand riled-up workers not come to work on holidays and in extra hours. They were hooked on doing better and finding ways to make that happen.
Once a team of cooperating members gets esprit de corps, gets a real team spirit, they run on a high octane sort of fuel. They can get very enthusiastic about bettering their performance.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
