Corrections or additions?
This article by Kathleen McGinn Spring was prepared for the July
4, 2001 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Teamwork Models: Geese
Turns out that geese — those scourges of the
corporate
lawn — have a great deal to teach business about team building.
Primrose Reeves gives this example: “When geese fly in a V,”
she says, “the upward lift they give each other increases their
efficiency by 71 percent.” Impressive. “I was teaching at
a manufacturing facility just yesterday,” the MCCC instructor
and corporate trainer says, “and I spoke about the geese.”
Whether manufacturing or service, every business needs to develop
teamwork strategies. “I see it in every sector,” says Reeves.
Reeves teaches a five-session class on “How to Build
High-Performance
Teams” beginning on Monday, July 9, at 6:30 p.m. at Mercer County
Community College. Cost: $225. Call 609-586-9446.
Now teaching three to four days a week, Reeves draws on a rich
background
of work experience in her classes. A 1961 graduate of Lock Haven
College
who holds a master’s degree in educational media, Reeves has been
a Peace Corps volunteer — three times — and spent 20 years
working for the TKR cable company as, among other things, general
manager, national director of training, and senior director of
customer
service. She accepted a buy-out when company was broken up, and
returned
to teaching, where she began her career Odyssey.
“I the early-’60s I went to the Philippines with the Peace Corps
as a teacher,” Reeves says. After that initial tour, she returned
to the United States, met and married a man (“no longer in the
picture”), who harbored an interest in serving with the Peace
Corps, but did not want to go alone. The couple joined up together,
and were sent to Kenya, where their daughter was born. Upon returning
home, they had another child, a boy, and when the children were three
and five, the whole family went on a Peace Corps assignment to the
Philippines.
After serving in the Peace Corps, Reeves, who had majored in biology
and education in college, decided she did not want to teach. She
worked
for the Girls Scouts of America for a time, and then went into the
corporate world. Doing so was not the norm for women of her
generation.
“As a female in the ’50s, competition was not encouraged,”
she says. Sizing up the scene in the for-profit world, Reeves
discovered,
however, that she could compete — and she liked the feeling.
“All
of a sudden I found an outlet for my competitive drive.”
But while engaging in competition is important for success in
business,
learning to be a good team mate on the job is even more important.
Reeves offers this advice, some of borrowed from the geese, to
companies
that want to harness the power of a team.
Don’t make the same worker fight the wind all of the time.”Geese share leadership,” she says. “When the lead getstired, someone else gets into his place.”Jockeying for position is a waste of energy. “If we’reso concerned about who’s in charge, we’re using our energy the wrongway,” she says. Better that each person knows, understands, andappreciates the roles and responsibilities of his co-workers.Take the time to teach fledglings the mores of the flock.Geese watch their young carefully, standing by patiently as they firstwork at swimming upstream or cutting a path through tall grass. Inthe business world, this is called “mentoring,” and Reevessays it is an important part of building cohesion.Stand by one another. Loyalty is back in fashion amongemployers who found hiring and retention to be the biggest headacheof the past six or seven years. One way to earn it is through a teamapproach that supports employees when they run into problems.”Whena goose is sick, two other geese will stay with it until it getsbetter— or dies,” says Reeves. This sense that each member of thecompany will be cared for, whether he is up against a sales slumpor a family emergency, creates a feeling of security that cantranslateinto a willingness to put in extraordinary effort when the companyitself runs into choppy water.Reeves says employees working in an atmosphere with strongteamworkvalues will indeed put each other — and the company — aheadof personal convenience. As an example, she points to the time whenshe was general manager of a cable television office in Hamilton inthe days before digital, when TV set-top converter boxes were lesssophisticated than they are now. “They were controlled bycomputer,”she recalls. The Hamilton office had just installed a new computer,and it malfunctioned, cutting off television reception to 12,000homes.”I got a call at midnight from the tech manager,” she says.”The only way it could be fixed was to have each customer callin and read us the serial number on the back of his converterbox.”Knowing 12,000 unhappy people soon would be calling an office thatnormally received about 200 calls a day, Reeves called all of hermanagers and asked them to come in to work by 7 a.m. “They alldid,” she says.During two days of non-stop calls, employees from other departmentsvolunteered to pitch in. “The studio people said `Our work canbe postponed. We can help,’” she says. Camaraderie arose quicklyand spontaneously, and Reeves is convinced the reason was apre-existingatmosphere where teamwork was valued.Much as she learned about teamwork in the Peace Corps and in corporateAmerica, Reeves says the roots of her belief in its effectivenessgo even deeper. A native of West Chester, Pennsylvania, Reeves recallsher father, a wholesale grocer, talking about “the importanceof families sticking together.” Vital for families — whethermade up of humans or of geese — teamwork is also an essentialfor successful companies.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
