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Good Old Lessons in From An Age-Old Fable: Teamwork

The document summarizes the fable of the tortoise and the hare through multiple races. In the first race, the hare loses to the tortoise by becoming overconfident and falling asleep. In later races, the tortoise wins by changing the conditions to play to its strengths, like swimming. Ultimately, the tortoise and hare realize they are most effective working as a team, combining their individual strengths. The moral is that teamwork allows individuals to overcome limitations and perform to their highest potential.

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55 views29 pages

Good Old Lessons in From An Age-Old Fable: Teamwork

The document summarizes the fable of the tortoise and the hare through multiple races. In the first race, the hare loses to the tortoise by becoming overconfident and falling asleep. In later races, the tortoise wins by changing the conditions to play to its strengths, like swimming. Ultimately, the tortoise and hare realize they are most effective working as a team, combining their individual strengths. The moral is that teamwork allows individuals to overcome limitations and perform to their highest potential.

Uploaded by

suri_23989907704
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Good old lessons in teamwork

from an age-old fable


The Tortoise
And
The Hare

Surendra Karempudi
Once upon a time a tortoise and
a hare had an argument about
who was faster.
That’s not true.
The fastest runner is
me!

I’m the fastest


runner.
They decided to settle
the argument with a
race. They agreed on Fine!
a route and started off
the race.

Ok, let’s have


a race.
The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some
time. Then seeing that he was far ahead of the
tortoise, he thought he'd sit under a tree for some
time and relax before continuing the race.

Poor guy! Even if I take


a nap, he could not
catch up with me.
He sat under the tree and soon fell asleep.
The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon
finished the race, emerging as the undisputed
champ.
The hare woke up and realized that he'd lost the
race.
The moral of the story is that slow and
steady wins the race.

This is the version of the story that we've


all grown up with.
The story continues …
The hare was disappointed
at losing the race and he
did some soul-searching.
He realized that he'd lost Why did I
lose the
the race only because he race?
had been overconfident,
careless and lax. If he had
not taken things for
granted, there's no way the
tortoise could have beaten
him.
So he challenged the
tortoise to another
race. The tortoise Ok.
agreed.

Can we have
another race?
This time, the hare went all
out and ran without
stopping from start to finish.
He won by several miles.
The moral of the story?

Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and


steady. If you have two people in your
organization, one slow, methodical and reliable,
and the other fast and still reliable at what he
does, the fast and reliable chap will consistently
climb the organizational ladder faster than the
slow, methodical chap.

It's good to be slow and steady; but it's better to


be fast and reliable.
But the story doesn't end here …
The tortoise did some thinking
this time, and realized that
there's no way he can beat the
hare in a race the way it was How can I
can win
currently formatted. the hare?
He thought for a while, and
then challenged the hare to
another race, but on a
slightly different route. Can we have another race?
The hare agreed. This time we’ll go through a
different route.

Sure!
They started off. In keeping with his
self-made commitment to be
consistently fast, the hare took off and
ran at top speed until he came to a
broad river. The finishing line was a
couple of kilometers on the other side Goal
of the river.
The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the
meantime the tortoise trundled along, got into the
river, swam to the opposite bank, continued
walking and finished the race.

What
should I
do?
The moral of the story?

First identify your core competency and then change the playing field to suit
your core competency.

In an organization, if you are a good speaker, make sure you create


opportunities to give presentations that enable the senior management to
notice you.

If your strength is analysis, make sure you do some sort of research, make a
report and send it upstairs.

Working to your strengths will not only get you noticed, but will also create
opportunities for growth and advancement.
The story still hasn't ended …
The hare and the tortoise, by this
time, had become pretty good
friends and they did some thinking
together. Both realized that the last
race could have been run much
better.
So they decided to do
the last race again, but Great! I think we could
to run as a team this do it much better, if we
two help each other.
time.

Hi, buddy. How


about doing our last
race again?
They started off, and this time
the hare carried the tortoise till
the riverbank.
There, the tortoise took over
and swam across with the hare
on his back.
On the opposite bank, the hare
again carried the tortoise and
they reached the finishing line
together. They both felt a
greater sense of satisfaction
than they'd felt earlier.
The moral of the story?

It's good to be individually brilliant and to have


strong core competencies; but unless you're
able to work in a team and harness each other's
core competencies, you'll always perform below
par because there will always be situations at
which you'll do poorly and someone else does
well.

Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership,


letting the person with the relevant core
competency for a situation take leadership.
There are more lessons to be learnt from this story.

Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The
hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure.
The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as
hard as he could.

In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work


harder and put in more effort. Sometimes it is appropriate to change
strategy and try something different. And sometimes it is appropriate
to do both.

The hare and the tortoise also learnt another vital lesson. When we
stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the
situation, we perform far better.
To sum up, the story of the hare and
tortoise teaches us many things:
Never give up when faced with failure
Fast and consistent will always beat slow
and steady
Work to your competencies
Compete against the situation, not against
a rival.
Pooling resources and working as a team
will always beat individual performers
Let’s go and build strong team!

Surendra Karempudi

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