Is Your Team as Tight as a Drum Corps?
This past weekend, a friend of mine took me to The Meadowlands to see the world championship of Drum Corps International, a nonprofit organization which brings together the country’s finest youth drum corps for an annual tour. Admittedly not my thing – even as a lifelong musician – I was none the less blown away by what I saw: hundreds of high school & college students not only playing at the highest levels, but marching and “drilling” about the field in absolute precision.
You’ve really got to see it to believe it. I mean, these kids are literally stepping, dancing and even running while playing, and just like the Great Glass Elevator, they go sideways and slantways and longways and backways. Half the time they’re not even looking where they’re going! Picture it- 100 people running around with drums, tubas and the like, playing their hearts out only an arms’ width apart and moving in perfect step with one another, and yet they never collide. How in the world is this possible?
The answer, I discovered, is threefold:
1. Individual corps members know exactly where they’re supposed to be at any given moment.
2. Total confidence that the OTHER corps members will be exactly where THEY are supposed to be.
3. Practice – Endless, grueling practice, over and over and over, until they get it right.
Is this level of teamwork feasible in a business setting? Even under the best of circumstances, fine tuning your team’s performance to such a high level of discipline and interdependency is probably not going to happen, and the best corporate team building activities in New York City, America or the world aren’t going to change that. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to achieve the level of excellence which the world’s best drum corps do.
How much more productive and efficient would your team be if they:
1. Knew exactly what was expected of them at any given moment, and executed their job functions perfectly.
2. Had absolute and complete faith in each other to deliver the highest-quality work every time.
3. Worked relentlessly at perfecting their Teamwork Machine.
As a manager of people, what can you do to help foster an environment where your team has the drive, confidence and trust in one another to rival the world’s best drum corps?