This is *not* the article that originally appeared in the OHDaMN.  I took this opportunity to do some rewriting and other editorial work.  It was, in my opinion, one of the weakest parts of the manual.  It may still be a bit weak, but now it looks better.

Team Work

Right now, you are just part of a group.  Your goal is to turn your group into a team.

A team can be defined as a group of people who share a common goal and are organized for narrow focus or purpose.  The key words here are "goal" and "organized".  Both reflect a degree of advance planning and overall cooperation.  In large and established groups, like the marching band, both the organizational goals and leadership structure are established, and one merely has to walk in the front door and start participating.  Someone will tell you what to do, eventually.

In a smaller group, no one gives you a goal.  No one tells you who to follow.  These things have to be determined amongst the members of the group.  Of course, consensus can be hard to achieve.  An ideal team would come together of its own accord because all members share the same goal.  In the real world, while people might claim to have the same "goal", all members of your team will define that goal slightly differently.  Some people may have differing views of the same goal, while others will have contradictory goals but mistakenly think everyone is talking about the same thing.  Even with the same stated goal, different people will have different ideas on how to reach it, and widely varying ideas on how the team itself should work.  The trick to getting a working team together is to minimize these differences, or at least, to get the team to work together despite these differences.

In a large business organization, there are actually many teams all working together, where each team is specialized, function oriented, and working with other teams to achieve the company's goals. You do not have the luxury of resources that these businesses can draw on.  You have only the people with you in the car to take care of what needs to be done.  Your team cannot afford specialization, and also does not need a rigid organizational structure.  Everyone needs to chip in, and both the team and all team members must be flexible when it comes to solving problems.

At this point it may be a good idea to look at the problems facing your team.  Obviously, a full listing of the all the expected situations your team will face would take up another manual, but generally speaking, your team will only deal with four types of problems:

• Strategic Tasks.  One part of team work is planning ahead to avoid problems.  Long-term advance planning is a Strategic Task, and obviously this will involve a great deal of discussion among team members.  For example, deciding who will be driving the car during the game, and on what shifts, would be a Strategic Task.
• Tactical Tasks.  Commonly, your team will encounter obstacles that are either easily countered, or which have been anticipated and planned for.  Any situation that has a pre-existing solution is Tactical Task, as are common problems team members are expected to handle on their own.  Tactical Tasks largely consist of things that must be done, not problems to be solved.  Running around the clue site looking for the clue envelope is a good example of a Tactical Task.
• Creative Tasks.  Quite a few of the clues you find during the game require intuitive leaps, novel approaches, or a differing viewpoint to solve.  Problems with no readily apparent solution and problems where accepted practices require too much time and effort are both examples of Creative Tasks.  Your goal is not merely a solution to the task, but a new and better solution.  Creative Tasks require the most effort from your team, and often require equal input and cooperation from several members in order to achieve successful resolution.  Nearly all clues in Get-a-Clue could be considered Creative Tasks.
• Emergencies.  Good strategic planning could break down the entire game to a series of Tactical Tasks, with every item thought out and pre-planned.  Even so, unexpected problems will always come up.  A bad situation can pop up at random anytime during the game:  a flat tire, a sick team member, a speeding ticket, etc.  Sometimes these problems can be treated as Creative Tasks.  More often an emergency  merely dictates a change in circumstances -- it is not something to be solved, but something that must be endured.  You can make some general plans for emergencies, but they must be dealt with as they come up; they usually cannot be anticipated or avoided.

In a very simple sort of organization, you will have a leader (commonly referred to as a "Team Captain" for Get-a-Clue) and a bunch of followers.  In any given situation, the captain decides what to do and tells his followers to do it.  This works well if you're dealing with little kids, but most adults resent it.  Most people would agree that each of us is a fairly capable individual, and we can assess a situation and decide what to do on our own.  A "top down" approach can work, but a "bottom up" structure gives you more input, more options, and more chances of getting it right.  It also frees up a lot of manpower -- if only one person is deciding what to do, then only one thing gets done at a time.  The rest of the team is sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for an assignment.

You still need a captain.  Every team, no matter what it is organized to do, will have a team leader.  Otherwise, a group of individuals hanging out together would be a "party", not a "team".  To maintain the benefits of leadership while making the most of each individual's contributions, you need to delegate tasks out to all members.  You need to have defined roles.  As a group, you should try to figure out just what the captain and everyone else will be doing:  someone needs to drive, someone will be reading a map, someone has the cell phone and talks to Game Control, and some poor sucker is stuck in the back handing out cokes and snacks all day.

You will likely want to swap roles from time to time, to keep people from getting bored and getting sloppy.  Overall leadership need not change, but make sure your leader is doing something more than "managing" the team.  "Captain" is only a title, after all, and not a role.  Also, a leadership role might be temporarily assumed by any member, depending on circumstances.  Solving clues during the game will require everyone's input, and who takes the lead in solving a particular clue will depend more on who knows the most about that subject, rather than who has been named team captain.

While defined roles and a definitive heirarchy does help, do not rely too heavily on a rigid organizational structure.  Given the small size and limited resources of your team, you must try to be flexible in both organization and execution.  Depending on the type of task you are currently handling, your operation as a team may be radically different from the way you first envisioned it.  At some point in the game, you may need to operate as a collective rather than a hierarchy, and often you will be doing bits of both simultaneously.  Remember, the whole idea of a team implies that several people can do a given job better than one person could do it by themselves, and this applies to tasks within the group as well as problems coming from outside the group.

Strategic tasks usually require a great deal of discussion, and you may find the team acting as equals, considering pros and cons of various options before seeking a group consensus.  Considering where, when, or if you should stop for lunch is an example of a Strategic Task that can best be handled by discussion.  Early strategic planning can be a lifesaver -- achieving the necessary consensus before starting the game can help reduce a lot of stress later.

Other tasks are more easily handled by just one person, often without consulting other members of the group.  Nearly all Tactical Tasks are of this sort, being the execution of plans already agreed to by the whole group.  When driving from one clue site to the next, for example, the driver will decide his route without much input from anyone, except perhaps someone who is reading a map.  As a team, you will likely determine a whole variety of situations when one person can do a task best without interference from others.  To limit future problems, it may be best to double check with someone briefly, but Tactical Tasks are by definition things group members are supposed to handle on their own.

Not all problems will be as easy to handle as these Strategic and Tactical Tasks, however.  When facing Creative Tasks or Emergencies, it can be convenient to fall back on a pre-determined structure rather than "discussing it in committee" first or expecting one member on the team to take care of everything.  You should try to retain the flexibility that you have developed for other tasks, but you should also remember your assigned roles and the specific allocation of duties.  When you come across a routine task, everyone falls back into their role and things can be done very quickly.  When you encounter something unexpected, team members know who to turn to and the solution process begins right away.

Enough theoretical discussion.  The following practical suggestions are some things you should consider, to help you go along and get along with the other people on your team:

• Remember:  No one ever won Get-a-Clue by themselves.  You need these people.
• Think of yourselves as a unit.  Come up with a distinct identity.  For example, we did not think of ourselves just as Joel's team, or Todd's team, or even just the team, we were (and still are) Team Blues.
• Members of the team provide positive feedback to other members.  Do not fall into the trap of blaming each other when things are not going well.
• On the other side of the same coin:  members listen to other member's constructive criticism.  You guys are all playing the same game, and they are only trying to help.  At least do them the favor of listening.
• Being on a team means you provide support and back one another up.  If you can help out, then you should help out, and you don't sulk in the back of the van just because someone may have been a bit too enthusiastic in providing you with constructive criticism.
• Being on a team means you know, trust, and depend on the other members of the team.  Some things have to be taken on trust.  For example, sometimes a person can glance at a clue and know the solution, and sometimes you should go with one of those impulses.
• Team leadership makes a difference.  Someone (and hopefully you had enough foresight to make her the captain) will need to take charge, and everybody else should shut up and follow directions.  Sometimes they should just shut up.

Back to Index