This TED video featuring collaborative engineering expert Tom Wujec is 9 minutes long…and yet you’ll be hard-pressed to find another way to find so much insight packed into 9 minutes. The task Wujec presents his clients is simple: “Draw how to make toast.” What seems like an elementary exercise explodes into a multi-faceted lesson on collaboration, organizational creativity, decision-making, motivation, and leadership.
In case you don’t get to sit down with this video and take notes, here are some clear connections to military leadership that I observed through his talk. As I watched, I saw application to a wide range of situations:
- A commander and Command Sergeant Major bringing the new team together to cast the vision statement for their time in command
- Any staff member staring at a blank Excel spreadsheet or map of the training area, tasked with planning the unit’s next phase of training
- A supply sergeant frustrated with how to reorganize the broken shop she just inherited
- Unit leaders piecing together the events that tragically led to a Soldier’s death
- Any one of us handling a piece of military equipment and wishing there was some better way to do X
- Unit leaders searching for how to implement Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Program guidance
- Strategists writing future policy and operating guidance
- An icebreaker exercise for unit team building and leader development events
- Visualizing alternate courses of action for a tactical problem
- A lesson on simple versus complex systems and plans
- Advice on how to communicate complex ideas to your team
- Insight into how the team members perceive situations, analyze problems, and express their thoughts
- An after action review process for reverse-engineering events like training exercises, unit functions, and campaign plans
- A way to explain the abstract Design Process and simplify the convoluted Military Decision Making Process
- A method for walking out of meetings feeling like you actually accomplished something.
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