It was around 100 degrees and over 200 volunteers descended on the Golden West College Boys & Girls Club to build a playground. Two days of preparation work made the effort ready to go.Volunteers were organized by work need and sent on their missions. As with many work efforts, once the teams are assigned they must self organize. In my case it was the concrete missing team. Some team members knew how to accomplish the task and many others had no idea. The team quickly self organized - concrete carriers, concrete mixers, concrete transporters, and the all important water hose controller. This was an important job. Too much and the concrete would not set fast enough, too little and the concrete is very difficult to mix.
Mary grabbed the hose and took her job very seriously. She said she had never mixed concrete before but is was quite obvious she was not going to over water. The mixing job got very hard and the mixing volunteers become fatigued. The process slowed. What a celebration when Cynthia the took the next water hose shift.
This was a funny lesson on how seriously people take their jobs when assigned. Both Mary and Cynthia were trying to do a good job. One had concrete as a priority and one had the team as the priority. Cynthia was a mixer before taking over the water task.
Do you see the importance of job rotations in this example? How else could this have been resolved fairly?
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