The Most Important Workplace Training You Won’t Get
And Why It Is Critical to Team Success
I was asked recently by the ever-amazing Celine Williams at reVisionary “What kind of training do you think is missing in the workplace?” — the question was particularly branded towards Millennials and recent grads who are just for the first real time entering the big scary world of the job market.
It’s a tough question for sure, but upon reflecting on it, I realized there really is only one vital skill that has made the difference between successful and unsuccessful teams throughout the course of my undergraduate and work career.
It’s simple.
Problem-solving.
But there’s more to it than that.
If you want to be a truly great team, you need to learn how to solve problems as a team — everything else comes second.
My Fourth Year Design Project (FYDP) group was probably one of the most stacked teams I have ever participated in — 6 Engineering Students tackling one rather tricky design problem, and needing to work together to come at it at various angles, to find a viable solution — no small task.
We all had our roles and responsibilities, and although each of us were able to work almost independently, our success as a team came through one factor:
Problem solving. As a team.
Each group member was responsible for one thing, but the solutions we came up with impacted each other members’ work. So if we couldn’t solve problems together, we would have no chance of finding a viable solution.
If you can learn how to effectively solve problems with a group of people of varying skills, backgrounds, goals, perspectives and abilities — well the sky’s the limit.
With technology moving faster and faster, and design becoming so heavily democratized, bigger and bigger challenges are starting to be tackled by smaller and smaller organizations.
When a start-up can disrupt the taxi regulatory system and threaten the livelihoods of thousands of people, you’ve got to wonder what other kinds of problems could be solved with similar ingenuity and teamwork.
The ability to solve big difficult problems often requires the expertise of more than one person, so the ability to leverage the experience of the entire group is critical.
Want to change the world? Well you need a good idea, a global vision, a viable market, and a kick-ass team. But if you can’t work together, then forget about it.
Problem solving as a team.
It’s the one skill I happened to learn along the way that has made all the difference.
