Craig Daniels
Taking a bit of time to watch and learn about some of the different creatures in nature can teach us invaluable lessons in teamwork. The lessons learned can be incorporated not just in our understanding but also in the outcomes of our teams within any organization we are involved with.
The following is excerpted and re-formatted from a manuscript I am editing entitled Lead Like Butler: Six Principles For Values-Based Leaders, by Kent Millard and Judith Cebula (Abingdon, 2012). The book, to be published at the beginning of next fall's college basketball campaign, looks at six principles that have driven the success of the Butler University Men's Basketball team.
Innovators, practitioners and experts will tell you that often the best ideas in their respective fields are inspired by ideas, inventions or practices in other areas. In fact, a recent study showed that 70% of innovators get their best ideas from fields other than their own.1 This will come as no surprise to business leaders who are familiar with the concept of "best practices."
Dawn Smith explores the concept that important lessons can be learned about leadership, teamwork, cooperation and communication from the ancestors of our current best friends: wild wolves. The idea that humans can learn from wolves is not new, and according to anthropologists, the practice is as old as the hills.
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." ~ African Proverb Teamwork can be described as the process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal. It involves subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole.
There is a popular book entitled Our Iceberg is Melting by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber. From the Iceberg website, here is their verbatim summary of the book. "Our Iceberg Is Melting is a simple fable about successfully responding to change in an ever-changing world. . . .
