One thing has become very obvious. Anybody that believes that there is automatically a common agenda because people work together, in a working environment, is potentially making a serious error of judgement. Working inside my learning team has taught me a couple of things.
Firstly it is possible to work together without ego's getting in the way (but that is a personal and a group choice as to whether it is possible); and secondly if there is a common agenda that has been defined from the beginning, there is a far higher chance that the group will function with a single goal in mind and hopefully achieve the goal. Lack of common purpose and common goal tends to result in chaos - something that is easy to recognise in the day to day workplace.
There has been one fundamental learning for me:- define and articulate your vision/goal/objective and then focus on achieving that. As one of the execs in the business described it - without a clear objective or vision, people tend to behave like a "5 year old football (soccer) team", everybody runs to the ball[problem] instead of waiting for the pass. Teams operate so much more easily if everybody plays in position. I guess in the corporate environment, some people just cannot help themselves and play all over the field, make a lot of noise, but are generally not extremely effective.
There has been another learning that is really simple, but I suspect is one that is easy to forget. We are all learning a ton of "stuff" while we are on the MBA "journey" - take every opportunity that you can to put the theory into practice, it does make a difference. But more often than not, while you are more likely to be the one that understands the difference in the way that you are working, others may just not get it....
But using the tools, does tend to cement it into the brain - the longer term benefit must be blatantly obvious.
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