“Team Leadership Lessons from the Great Pyramids – Nurturing Highly Motivated Teams to Do the Impossible”
Continued from Part 1 –
…“The Great Pharaoh” was always striving for bigger and better Pyramids, BUT, there were definitely some quality issues. So when TepTep got his first position as Quarry Manager for the construction blocks division, he found the real world issues were very different than what he learned in school.
Although the employees did the job, he found the division’s effectiveness was sadly lacking. People were not putting in a “full” effort, politics were being played, people were blaming each other for mistakes and difficulties, and there was little or no cooperation across divisions… he even heard many employees say they felt like they were being treated like slaves. Wow, he didn’t have to go to school to know that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. At first he thought it was because they were only paid about 3 baskets of grain a week (minimum wage for skilled labour), but this idea was about to change, and the course of leadership (and pyramid building) would never be the same again.
Picture of Egyptian workers being lazy and complaining in a quarry
TepTep thought he would never be able to be a great leader here. He didn’t want to be held back by this kind of dysfunctional environment so he went Great Pharaoh’s senior management and asked to be re-assigned. “After all”, he thought, “A leader couldn’t be great with people who weren’t eager to do what he said ”. “Could they?”
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One of the more important Pyramid Failures was the Pyramid at Meidum built for Pharaoh Seneferu. Today it lays in ruins and toppled blocks. This early attempt failed because of one simple factor that skilled stonework had not yet foreseen. Each of the carved stones were laid as individual blocks, with one piled on top of the other. These gave way to earthquakes and strong weather conditions over time and the structure fell apart. |
The senior managers all sat around a big table and listened to him complain, when he was finished, they talked and whispered and then said: “sure, why not, your dad was a real fun guy at the alligator wrestling matches, so go ahead, we will put you in charge of pyramid building”
TepTep said “thank you” and thought “Wow, now I can work with people who have greater skill and knowledge, and they even get better pay. These people are more like me, so they will be easier to lead.”
TepTep was excited. He wanted to understand more about his job so he decided to visit some of the latest developments. His first stop was the recently finished project in Meidum to see the pyramid built for Pharaoh Seneferu only a few years before. When he arrived, he saw the blocks were already starting to crumble and the structure wasn’t very sturdy. “This sucks!” he thought, this was not the quality he wanted to create.
Rendering of pyramid at Meidum
He looked at the structure again. While each of the individual stones was carved skilfully, each was just laid as an individual block, with one piled on top of another. With minor earthquakes and strong weather conditions the whole complex was already falling apart. And of course no one was taking responsibility for it and everyone was blaming everyone else. People were talking behind others back because one stone carver would think his carving is better than the other guys, or one would think he was caring more Weight than the rest. But the quality of the overall work was still not what it could be. He felt that all the theory he had learned from ISIS school of Management was not applicable in the real world, when the “human element” was introduced.
But Why?
Why would people who have the skill, have the experience, and have reasonable pay, not really put in the extra effort to build something Great?
Why were they working as individuals instead as a team with a common vision?
TepTep was discouraged and confused. Suddenly a hawk cried overhead, and as TepTep looked up, he saw a sign.
Picture of a sign carried by a hawk that says “The Great Bubu, Magic Solutions to your problems”
“That’s it! That’s how I can be a great leader and a great builder of Pyramids, I will get the magic solution.”…
Its a nice build up of possible sceanarios in organisations with ‘undestanding’ management. also leads to a possibility that modern education, especially management, has to mimic real life, much earlier than later, to be effective in its approach and solutions.
Really life case studies with possibilities of risk and danger may be created more effectively through ‘success/failure’ synergies and perhaps better answers arrived at.
Interesting story line Arthur..
I’d like to see how the story plays out if the management vision has not evolved along with the changing times.
Waiting to read some more.
Good luck.
TepTep can solve his problem by working with the employees to define what norms should be established for them to feel their efforts matter in creating the quality product they each can be proud of. By helping employees to see their work in relation to the Three-Dimensional Leader paradigm of “mission, resources and context,” they can develop the quality processes within their work context that will ensure resources are used to the maximum advantage to produce the quality pyramids they all can be proud of.
Here is a section from Earl Wallac’s The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context:
“The Forming, Storming, Norming Team Process
Dr. Bruce Wayne Tuckman published one of the most quoted works on team behaviors in 1965, titled Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.35 Dr. Tuckman observed that groups go through a process of forming, storming, and then norming. The leader must work to help the team reach a normal functioning stage. This is achieved by clarifying mission goals during the “forming” part of the process, so people see the vision and will value it to work through the initial hardships that result when they are learning to get along with each other. The leader must help the members work on identifying what impedes their cooperative teamwork during the “storming process” that results when people experience conflicts as they begin misunderstanding each other. The “norming” process involves the team members evolving to where they commit to trusting and relying upon each other to take ownership to collaborate to fulfill the mission. Teams that are operating in the third dimension are those that have normalized relations and defined and rallied around a set of values, goals, and measurements to establish a culture that guides their daily interaction and decisions. Reaching “the third dimension of teamsmanship” involves making the commitment to invest in what it takes to arrive and continue to work at the level of emotional intelligence with each other.”
Good Processes Lead to Good Outcomes
Leaders must not only work with employees to establish the norms for quality outcomes, but they also must negotiate the organizational context by developing the processes that will ensure quality outcomes.
Since people do what management counts, the desired quality processes and outcomes must be quantified, and employees must be held accountable to hit the standards. An appropriate employee evaluation process is essential to mission fulfillment. Here is another section from The Three-Dimensional Leader:
“Values Are the Engine that Powers Employee Behavior
The values with which employees are treated are the determining factor as to whether or not they reach their potential for organizational success. By working with managers and supervisors to ensure that the organizational values are consistently reflected in the employee evaluation and discipline process, the organization ensures that only those with the right values remain within and get promoted up through the culture.
Values are essential to implementing an employee-evaluation process. This is because to interpret whether or not human behavior is consistently compatible with the company’s goals, we must have a clear understanding of the actions, activities, and behaviors that go into performing the job duties and assignments. Understanding and articulating values are the foundation for determining not only the “what” of a job but also the “how” of the job. Values tell how one should behave when not only performing specific job duties but also when interacting and interfacing with others both inside and outside of the company.
Values articulate the desired attitude with which all employees are expected to perform their jobs. Values determine team synergy and customer satisfaction. These values should be articulated not merely in the strategic plan, but they should be drilled down into the employee-evaluation forms that supervisors and managers use when assessing performance.
To achieve a cohesive organization, leaders must instill evaluators with a sense of mission fairness so that each employee is evaluated by the same values standards. Fair and impartial evaluations and assessments encourage subordinates and team members to believe that the values and the mission they support really do matter most. Employees with the right values should be empowered and trusted.”
By pursuing these initiatives tiptop becomes a three-dimensional leader who will work with his team to accomplish far more than mere management sees is possible.