Bring home the gold with an Olympic-worthy team

Watching the 2016 Olympics last night, particularly the swimming and gymnastics events, it occurred to me how much in common Olympic teams and job shops share. Team members work closely together to produce the best possible end result. This is illustrated in every job shop profile in our magazines and through our monthly blog posts from Nick Martin of Wilson, N.C.-based Barnes MetalCrafters.

Something else that they share is the need to have the right team members. Winning the gold medal in the 4 x 22 freestyle relay required all-out efforts by swimmers Conor Dwyer, Townley Haas, Ryan Lochte, and Michael Phelps. If just one of these four had not carried their weight, there’s a good chance the team might have failed to capture the gold.

The same can be said for the “Final Five” women’s gymnastics team that captured the team gold by leading the competition from start to finish and winning by multiple points. Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Madison Kocian, Laurie Hernandez, and Simone Biles, finished with a team total of 8.209 points, the largest margin of victory since the "Perfect 10" scoring system was replaced by the current open-ended scoring method. They surpassed the previous record of 5.066 points, set by the U.S. “Fierce Five” in London in 2012.

If you’ve watched these gymnasts, you no doubt have witnessed their individual and collective focus on the task at hand. You also have seen how they support and respect each other. It’s obvious that they care about the team and its success.

All of this transfers to other areas of life that involve teamwork, including job shops.

An essential component of any team is having the right members, in terms of both technical and personal skills. You have to work together for the good of the business, which ultimately, should benefit the individual members.

In an article published in The FABRICATOR® in 2004, “Why companies really fail and how to turn them around, Part I,” author Robert Vacker, formerly a general manager at SET Enterprises, addressed the importance of teamwork and some misconceptions about it:

“The highly publicized, promoted, and misconstrued concept of teamwork bears some blame for lackluster performance in many U.S. industries. While employee teamwork has received an incredible amount of attention from the media, higher education, and management, productivity gains still remain low, often resulting in layoffs to make it appear that productivity has gone up. If teamwork truly existed, there would be no need for layoffs to keep productivity high.

“Many incompetent team members, some of whom may be in charge, hide behind a few genuine contributors who truly help make things happen. It is a well-worn statistic that 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work, but the teamwork environment has a tendency to spread the glory as well as the blame; no individual ever gets singled out for praise or reprimand.”

“Teamwork works only when everyone on the team is a real contributor. There must be consequences for those who do not pull their own weight, and rewards for those who make the extra effort. When productive individuals in a team of slackers contribute to the success of an enterprise, they must be acknowledged. Otherwise, the producers actually are penalized.

“Accountability often is lacking when ‘the team’ works on a project jointly. Multimillion-dollar investment blunders resulting from team decisions are not rare; they happen daily in most corporations around the world. Subsequently, individual efforts to reveal and correct collective errors are met with resistance. Ultimately, those striving to effect positive change become fed up with the ‘don't-rock-the-boat’ atmosphere and leave the company, while the less productive and unmotivated employees stay behind and continue to do as little as possible.

“Management is crucial to the success of teamwork. The boss must be willing to keep an open office door and truly respect, listen to, and consider the employees' concerns.”

Real-world examples of how vital having the right team is can be found in “The daily grind in a small fab shop” and “Voting workers off the island,” both written by fabricator Nick Martin. If you are working in a job shop, you’ll no doubt nod your head as you read.

How good is your team?