Your Future is Together

Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai have become the popular tech icons of Indian youth along with Mark Zuckerberg. Satya Nadella’s book “Hit Refresh” has hit an “Enter” among the Indian tech geeks and the obsessive self-help readers. His trip to India has made another invasion into the interests of his fans. When the CEO of Microsoft becomes a writer, it is no surprise that he could be a remarkable choice to be the guest editor of “Times of India” and he has proved his worth. Starting from sharing the past, present and future of the digital world to talking about his passion for cricket, his views on politics and coming up to Delhi, what excited me through the reading is the word “Team work”. And what worried me is the term “lack of”. But it is true anyways. 

When the India education system focuses just in scores and with an approach worse than the aim, it is natural that there is no team work. When the education has a benchmark to evaluate students on their “individual” scores, there is no opportunity for “team work” teachings. May be some colleges and schools have instilled team work activities just to back up their marketing strategies and surface it along with the curriculum without even effecting it. The result is students never get an opportunity or time to realise the importance of team work and practice it. But when it comes to the wide space outside the institutions, what takes you forward is some more pair of hands whose legs are walking in a different path.

There is a difference between a team and a group. Group is just where there are more than 2 workers performing their own jobs “individually”. We can collectively call that connectionless multiples as group. Whereas, in teams, it has individuals who are distinct but work together with their distinction towards “one focused goal”. This process is the formula for accomplishment of a project. A project is an aggregation of tasks. In any field, be it technical, management or social, it never stops with a single task to reach the goal neither does it “starts” with a single task. The journey towards the goal is the aggregate of multiple tasks and that is where team is required and works. 

When working in a team, it is a “compulsion” to co-ordinate and help the co-employees to reach the goal together and to take it up to further heights. Irrespective of being an employee or entrepreneur, you have to respect the concept of team work to achieve the targets. Individual competition might be good to beat yourself and grow better day by day. But when it comes to put your personal development to use, your first practical lesson will be to get along with a “team”. Only when all four wheels of a car runs with co-ordination, the car will be stable till it reaches its destination. The same way, only if all the four wheels of a car stop at the point, will the car’s engine be powered up to run further. Lack of co-ordination would always lead to chaos and confusion ultimately damaging the journey or the car itself. When you are an employee, you have to get along with your team members not only with the integration of tasks but also with the information of tasks. 

It is necessary to get to know who is doing what, how and by when. If not, you might end up in “Too many cooks spoiling the broth”. Even if you are an employer, your most important job is to co-ordinate the integration of teams and design the teams such that diversity is lead to convergence.

Satya Nadella’s point and concern for “team work” comes from the success of Microsoft and not from any failures in his company where “team work” is a strength to take pride upon.