Three Idiots and a Valley…….

Another lecture and yet another learning opportunity from Dr Mandi, as all of you must be well versed by now Prof loves teaching via activities. He has named this one quite uniquely “3 idiots crossing the valley”.

The activity is pretty simple, 3 people are there and they have to cross a valley which is wider than the distance they can cover in a stride but shorter than what they would cover in 2 steps. All they have is a log of wood long enough that all of them can hold it together and at the same time just enough strong to take the weight of a single person.

The picture below will explain the process adopted by the idiots to cross the valley.

Though the picture is self explanatory, let me describe it for better understanding.

1. When the first person takes the first step, he will be half risky since one of his feet will be in air and other on the ground, at the same time other two people will be full safe.
2.  Everybody will take one more step at this moment, first person will be fully risky and other two will be full safe. But since other two people will be holding the rod, with proper communication, coordination and trust they can cross the valley.
3. This process will be repeated for other two persons. Every time they will be either half risky or full risky.

The key points of this process are

1. Exactly one person remains in high risk zone.
• High Risk 01 times
• Half Risks 02 times
• Fully Safe 02 times
2. The risks experienced by various people can be summarized as
3.  The team members take 9 positions, out of which 6 safe completely, 2 half safe and 1 completely  unsafe.
4.   All three members have equal share in terms of effort and risk. Nobody was overloaded or relaxed.
5.  All members were equally interdependent while performing the task to achieve the goal of crossing the valley safely
6. This interdependence makes all the members indispensible.
7.  In addition to the above mentioned points there are other requirements as well which include Communication, coordination and feedback is essential while working in a team.

So this activity is ideal to teach some of the key concepts to survive in the competitive market outside.

•  Teamwork
•  Effective participation in meetings and team events
• Intelligently using the team strength for overcoming problems remember age old saying United we stand divided we fall
• Properly communicating the work progress achieved to superiors
• Pro actively helping members in need

Also in this task the division of the risk and leadership was equally divided among the three members, so all the members were equal. In all there are 27 positions possible for 3 people. The tactic devised by the idiots puts at least person in extreme peril, the ideal situation would be when they would be able to achieve the same feat with every member being in no risk zone for all time while performing the action.

As a team it helps us whet the following attributes

• Work for common goal to strive for perfection
• Accountability
• Mutual Respect
• Trust
• Communication
• SMART Goal Setting

Till next blog think of some activity wherein all of the above mentioned traits were displayed and used to achieve a target which was mammoth and seemingly impossible to achieve. 

PS: hint, the task was of national level and was performed by people who are best in the world.