SKY WALK -The Best Example of Dynamic Leadership

 Three Situations can emerge –

     1)      One leader at all the times.

     2)      Changing leaders as per the need of the hour.

     3)      Many leaders at a single point in time.

To ascertain which alternative is the best Prof. Mandi introduced us with a cartoon named as SKY WALK. The cartoon depicts three members working as a team and are crossing high raised building tops from left side to right side. The cartoon depicts SKY WALK' of three people ' . 

This cartoon is also a good example of teamwork which is the ability to work together towards a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishment towards organizational objectives.

 Image itself was self-explanatory:  3 people are crossing the valley safely with help of a pole. But is it so simple to do? Firstly, there was a constraint before performing the task i.e no more than 3 people should do this. Secondly, there was no description about gap length, distance between 2 people, length of pole, height of all 3 people,etc. 

THE SOLUTION:

To perform this activity , task has to be divided in 9 process or stages where 3 people would be in between these 3 stages -  safe , half risky and full risky. So stages were like:-

Step	State of 1st Person	State of 2nd person	State of 3rd person
1.	Safe	Safe	Safe
2.	Half-Risky	Safe	Safe
3.	Full-Risky	Safe	Safe
4.	Half-Risky	Half-Risky	Safe
5.	Safe	Full-Risky	Safe
6.	Safe	Half-Risky	Half-Risky
7.	Safe	Safe	Full-Risky
8.	Safe	Safe	Half-Risky
9.	Safe	Safe	Safe

 

LEARNINGS :

1)      Dynamic Leadership: There is not a single leader at all the times .Each member is taking the leadership role while crossing valley for a certain time, and then the leadership is transferred to someone else. In this way SKY WALK was achieved. One leader commanding all the time might be very risky in this situation.  Also, if all were leaders at the same time all would try to dominate and no one would be ready to follow, thus the situation would become haywire.

2)      Communication - Effective communication is the backbone of Teamwork in any organization. If no communication is there no knowledge sharing is possible. This lack of communication increases the time it takes to complete projects. Teamwork promotes conversation between employees regarding the task at hand, possibly preventing employees from working in opposite directions.

3)      Coordination - Coordination is very important as performance totally depend on it. Like in case of crossing the valley, each person should have taken every next step in a synchronized way.

4)      Load Distribution: The load of each person was shared by the other two due to proper organization. From this we conclude that a job may seem very cumbersome for a single individual but efficient organizations can perform these tasks with ease.

5)      Uniformity of roles: Similar roles for all 3 individuals. There is no differentiation among person 1, 2 and 3. All contribute equally to achieve the goal. The amount of risk is also equally distributed among them.

Above were my observations and learnings from the SKY WALK Cartoon. Please go through different articles on the same cartoon and provide your valuable insights.

Until Next week!

Cheers!!

Ankush