I spent part of today baking. I never cease to be amazed by the way that a set of ingredients come together to make something so beautiful and tasty. There isn’t much to say about flour, eggs and sugar. Individually they are just rather uninteresting items. But put them together and bake and out comes cake, it makes me feel like an alchemist.
It made me think that it is similar to all the best teams. Individually the team member are ok, and each have their own characteristics that make them distinct. But if you give them the right amount of mixing and put them together in the appropriate order they can create something new, something way more powerful.
If you ‘bake’ them together through work events, activities and development then the team becomes stronger. A cake mixture also goes from being a runny thing to being a light and airy sponge when it comes out of the oven.
I know this is stretching the simile a bit far but I think you get the point. Basically, however good, knowledgeable or skilled you think you are you are always stronger when part of a team. That is true if the team all know what their role is and they play to their strengths. We know that we should be working together, complementing each other so that we reach even higher. If there is too much fighting or friction within a team then the cake will flop and it becomes unsatisfactory. In those circumstances we need to go back to the drawing board and look again at the make up of the team.
But just like baking when it is good it is exceptional and something that will be remembered for a long time.
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