Great at Work by Morten Hansen

Author:Morten Hansen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

SHARPEN THE TEAM GOAL

In many teams, personal goals and infighting prevail because the team lacks a compelling, common goal. Team members retreat into their own individual interests, and before too long, team unity dissolves. You can unite a team by sharpening the team goal.

In a business school case I wrote with famed mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears and INSEAD professor Ludo Van der Heyden, we described how David led a team up Mount Everest in May 1996 to make a movie using an IMAX camera.41 Three team members were trying to scale the mountain for the first time. Any climber in this situation yearns to reach the summit—that’s a selfish goal, not a team objective. The IMAX team, however, had a clear and compelling collective goal: get that ninety-pound heavy camera—which they affectionately called “the pig”—on top of the mountain so that they could capture the shot from the summit. Keep in mind, every ounce counts on a journey up Everest. Climbers will cut a toothbrush in half to save weight on the exhausting trip into thin air. So hauling the pig up the mountain was a colossal affair.

The team goal—get the pig to the top—drove every decision and united the team. Individual goals such as summiting were secondary. Pig over person. In one instance, Breashears ordered Sumiyo, a Japanese climber on the team, to stay behind on summit day because she was climbing a bit slower than the rest. The team could not afford to slow down, even though she was a strong individual climber.

In the end, the team made it. Team members filmed their movie on top of Everest. They triumphed in part because of their sharp, unifying goal. Think about how you can sharpen your team’s goal and make it the most important priority for everyone on the team. That way, team members will downplay their own selfish agendas and commit to the team’s decisions.

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