This is LIFE. Lead it!: March 2012

It took me a couple of days to digest and reflect over the last weekend.

I am talking about the Residential Weekend at Cambridge, where we my MBA group joined a MA Management group for a Business Game, provided by London Metropolitan University.

The game consisted in 4 companies selling the same product called NATUFIT. As a team, we should run the company and drive it to deliver the best profit results and market share. In between business decisions there were lots team building activities that not only brought out our creativity but worked well on improvisation and few resources. Activities such as recording a 60 seconds commercial for a new product in forty-five minutes, creating a poster with a new product idea, writing a speech for a new Distribution, etc.

Although it was a hypothetical situation, major decisions were taken over critical departments in every company: Operational Costs, Transport, Productivity, P&L, Sales forecast, Competitor's Analysis and Pricing. All that, always strictly abounded by time pressure, to keep it loyal to reality.

Thru-out the weekend, all situations were very much like our real job, and MLK, my team, or shall I say OUR TEAM, really put our best and won the business game, mainly by following our ground rules:

* Commitment - Punctuality --> BE PUNCTUAL

* No rules. Out of the box thinking all the time --> BE FLEXIBLE

* Commitment --> ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

* Sharing --> DO YOUR FAIR SHARE
* Behaviour --> BE KIND

It all started with a 1st decision - name of the team - and badge/logo creation that captures the nature of the members, this name would carry the team all the way thru the next 12 months.

From left to right: Adesola (Nigeria), Martin (Spain), Myself (Brazil), Nayef (Qatar)

WE HAVE A DREAM, WE ARE M.L.K. - MARTIN LUTHER KING

We stand for a multi-cultural team, where different point of views are always welcome and contribute to decision making process.

We also encourage equality, so members are treated equal and have the same opportunity in everything we do.

We respect and look after each other as well as treat everybody in a kind and carrying way.

We did not form a Group where 1+1+1+1=4. We built a TEAM where 1+1+1+1=8!

Bibliography

Although we have been together for five weeks, our ground rules were solid, and it helped us follow thru consistently all four stages of group formation theory: Forming -> Storming -> Norming -> Performing. As suggested by Tuckman & Jensen, (1977) there isn't a single team that passed thru the steps once and they reach maturity. In fact teams are often going from Performing back to Storming to develop more and become stronger as the process repeats.

Team building activities are incredible situations to better understand everyone in your team. It is a unique time to step out of current situations and critically analyze not only your leadership style, attitude, posture, and behavior towards your team but all the members of it. I personally benefitted from and learned a lot about myself and others with this multi-cultural weekend.

I tried to understand the success of our team based on my previous professional experiences, and on a certain way I was able to relate it over two different perspectives, on my last two assignments in Procter&Gamble, when I delivered results with a strong propose and team feeling, and the opposite, when I had a smaller team and a focused objective without much emotional appeal.

On my working experience in the sales department at Procter&Gamble as a Leader of an organization with over 80 salesman, I shared the same team feeling as I had this weekend. back than, my team created a vision and we followed thru as a solid organization to reach our common goal on the next two years. We wanted to be recognized as an "A initiatives implementation Machine". We would be the first sales team to implement any product launch or initiative in the whole country. Our passion for winning made it happen, we had a purpose.

In addition, at my last assignment in P&G as a Trade Marketing Manager for the Hair Care category brands, everyday if not every hour, I was facing new challenges with time and results/profit pressure, as well as a lot of unproductive meetings and bureaucracies.
With than in mind, although I was, most of the time, over delivering my targets, I had little time to develop my team and felt that I was always REACTING to problems rather than working out the issue to understand how to close the gap and work more effectively.

After a couple of reading on Managing People, I realized that I wasn't alone. As observed by Carlson (1951) found that managers worked long hours with continuos interruptions, therefore had little time alone to develop critical thinking upon it's teams and deliveries. Instead of being maestros of their orchestra, managers were puppets controlled by inumerous tasks and lack of time.

Based on Motivation theories, both content and process, combined with my previous 7 years experience, and the first 5 weeks of MBA, I already placed some pieces in the right spot of my big puzzle and came to a first relevant conclusion:

In my point of view, PURPOSE, AUTONOMY and CHALLENGE are features that will get the best out of 21st century managers.

Maybe, this is one of the key factors that led our team to win the Competition. We allowed space for each of us to be itself. We created a safe environment thru clear and valuable ground rules and a lot of respect to each other. Later on I will post on a Critical Incident that was the key turning point for our team - Nayef's pitch -.

Below some pictures of the Residential Weekend.

THE WINNERS!!