Great teams achieve more together than they could alone.
I was reminded of this today by an BBC news article, Birds' V formation mystery 'solved'. "Scientists say they have solved the mystery of why birds fly in a V formation, by tracking critically endangered birds that were being trained to migrate".
This wasn't news to me. Our rowing coach had told us about the V-formation of flying geese as a way to explain to us what real team work was. The birds (as you can read in the article) take it in turns to fly on the front. This is because the other birds can benefit by flying in the slipstream of the front bird. One bird works hard so the others can save energy. Then they switch. By doing this, they all use less energy that flying straight into the wind all the time.
It's the same for cyclists. If you watch the Tour De France or any other pro race, you'll see that the "protected riders" are the team leaders. They save their powder for the big finish of the day and their teams do the hard work to get them close to the finish with a much energy left as possible. The team leader finishes the job. In cycling, even on Sunday club ride, each rider is expected to "take their turn" on the front, dig hard and deep for a few minutes before returning to the slipstream of the bunch. By doing this the speed of the group increases overall.
Needless to say there's lots of lessons to be learned here for how we can be a great team together at work. It's fairly obvious, but here are some takeaways...
- take turns on the front
- share the effort
- dig deep when it's your turn
- stay together
- head in the same direction
I leave you with this video for inspiration...
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