Friday 10 February 2012

When all else fails

Teamwork is tricky. Anyone who has seen The Apprentice has witnessed how the teams react in the ‘board room’ when it’s time for someone to get fired. When they defend themselves, no one wants to take responsibility for their actions and they try to pin the blame on a convenient scapegoat. The candidates tend to sell each other out in a bid to survive. The rivalry, the bickering and the back-biting make TV ratings soar, but there are lessons to be learned here as well. It’s a snapshot of the kind of things that can go wrong in office teams. It's mainly factors such as poor judgment, egos, mistrust or losing sight of key objective that become apparent.

If trust and a shared vision to succeed are in place in the team then failure is the successful result of debunking a shared mythology. Learning that How we think things work and How things actually work are the real lessons to success.

The great lament of any reporter is what to do with the jewels that routinely get left on the cutting room floor after a really great interview. Enter the 30-Second MBA, an ongoing video “curriculum” of really good advice from the trenches, directly from people who are making news happen.