Valley Crossing Exercise

Valley Crossing Exercise – Yet another exercise to understand management concepts!

Famous Quotes:

Talent win games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships – Michael Jordan

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself - Henry Ford

“Valley Crossing Exercise” is a very useful management exercise to understand the importance of teamwork. Teamwork is a mixture of action process, interpersonal process and transition period in between. Teamwork consists of leadership, team formation, team norms, outcome interdependence, competition and cooperation. Teamwork can lead to better decisions, products or services.

The following image clearly depicts why teamwork is so much useful and what it can lead to:

“Together Everyone Achieves More”

As can be seen in the above image, when multiple people work as part of a team, the overall output obtained is much higher than the one obtained by working individually.

Explanation of valley crossing exercise through a picture is as below:

Understanding of the exercise:

• Three people who are one side of a valley have to cross the valley using a rod. The gap between the valleys is more than one step long but less than two steps. At any time, all the three people have to hold the rod and using synchronous movements, cross the valley.
• Any person, while on top of the valley (the “risky” position to be in) will be supported by other two people. All the three members here have interchanging roles in the completion of task. As can be noticed in the above image, all the three members have equal distribution of risky, half-risky and safe situations.
• The success of this exercise will depend upon how closely the three people work as part of a team, coordinate and communicate with each other through sound/signals and follow a synchronous movement.

Here are the steps required to complete this exercise:

Below are the management lessons learnt from this exercise:

1.   Responsibility:

      Everyone in an organization should feel equally responsible to achieve the objectives of the organization. Task can only be completed successfully if everyone in the team works collectively and in a responsible way.

2.   Planning:

Proper planning is required to be done for initiating any task so that the task is completed on time. In the valley crossing exercise, the plan was already formulated by the team members in the way they would cross the valley (take 9 steps with alternate and synchronous movement of left and right leg). The plan should be focused on how we can leverage our strength as a team.

3.   Communication:

      Effective communication is very much essential for the success of the team and the organization and as it has been proven in this exercise. Synchronous movements by communicating with each other through sounds/skills were very much essential for the success of this exercise.

4.   Shared vision:

      It is important to have a shared vision, which is clear and informs about where the organization  wants to head in the future. Vision needs to be shared with all the members of the organization so as to enable the members to work collectively in achieving the organization’s defined goal.

5.   Trust:

      Organizations cannot be successful if there is no element of trust in it. As in the case of valley exercise, a person was ready to cross the valley while being in a “risky” and “half-risky” state only because he/she trusted the other members in the team. Similarly, in an organization, managers and employees need to trust each other.

6.   Defined roles and responsibilities:

      Roles and responsibilities need to be clearly defined for each and every individual in an organization since then, they will be aware of the kind of work that is expected from them. Valley crossing exercise was successful since each member knew when to move their leg (either left or right) and that it should be in sync with the other members of the team.

7.   Coordinative relationship:

      Signifies the bond between the team members to allow them to seamlessly coordinate their work to achieve both efficiency and effectiveness.

8.   Interdependent Task:

      It is the extent to which a member of the team needs to interact with the other team members to complete the work. As in the valley crossing exercise, it was of utmost importance for a member to be interdependent on other members so as to mitigate the risk and complete the task in hand.

      Interdependent task becomes more crucial once we go higher up the corporate ladder. It becomes more important to work with the team, take their inputs and consider their expertise/skills/opinions.

9.   No scope for “social loafing”:

There is no scope for social loafing while working in a team. Everyone is expected to work to achieve the defined objectives.