“Team. Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford
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While reading The Book of Virtues, I came across this very thought-provoking story:
Once upon a time, a man had a dream in which his hands and feet and mouth and brain all began to rebel against his stomach.
“You good-for-nothing sluggard!” the hands said. “We work all day long, sawing and hammering and lifting and carrying. By evening we’re covered with blisters and scratches, and our joints ache, and we’re covered with dirt. And meanwhile you just sit there, hogging all the food.”
“We agree!” cried the feet. “Think how sore we get, walking back and forth all day long. And you just stuff yourself full, you greedy pig, so that you’re that much heavier to carry about.”
“That’s right!” whined the mouth. “Where do you think all that food you love comes from? I’m the one who has to chew it all up, and as soon as I’m finished you suck it all down for yourself. Do you call that fair?”
“And what about me?” joined the brain. “Do you think it’s easy being up here, having to think about where your next meal is going to come from? And yet I get nothing at all for my pain.”
And one by one, the parts of the body joined the complaint against the stomach, which didn’t say anything at all.
“I have an idea,” the brain suggested. “Let’s all rebel against the lazy belly and stop working for it.”
“Superb idea!” all the other members and organs agreed. “We’ll teach you how important we are, you pig. Then maybe you’ll do a little work of your own.”
So, they all stopped working. The hands refused to do lifting and carrying. The feet refused to walk. The mouth promised not to chew or swallow a single bite. And the brain swore it wouldn’t come up with any more bright ideas. At first the stomach growled a bit, as it always did when it was hungry. But after a while it was quiet.
Then, to the dreaming man’s surprise, he found he could not walk. He could not grasp anything in his hand. He could not even open his mouth. And he suddenly began to feel rather ill.
The dream seemed to go on for several days. As each day passed, the man felt worse and worse. “This rebellion had better not last much longer,” he thought to himself, “or I’ll starve.”
Meanwhile, the hands and feet and mouth and brain just lay there, getting weaker and weaker. At first they roused themselves just enough to taunt the stomach every once in a while, but before long they didn’t even have the energy for that. Finally, the man heard a faint voice coming from the direction of his feet.
“It could be that we were wrong,” they were saying. “We suppose the stomach might have been working in his own way all along.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” murmured the brain. “It’s true that he’s been getting all the food. But it seems he’s been sending most of it right back to us.”
“We might as well admit our error,” the mouth said. “The stomach has just as much work to do as the hands and feet and brain and teeth.”
“Then let’s get back to work,” they chorused together. And at that the man woke up.
To his relief, he discovered his feet could walk again. His hands could grasp, his mouth could chew, and his brain could now think clearly. He began to feel much better.
“Well, there’s a lesson for me,” he thought as he filled his stomach at breakfast. “Either we all work together, or nothing works at all.”
There are lots of sayings that remind us of this lesson. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In union, there is strength. United we stand, divided we fall. None of us is as smart as all of us. Alexander Pope reminds: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole.”
Experts call this effort teamwork. Scottish-born American businessman Andrew Carnegie explains: “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. (It is) the ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
British singer Paul McCartney admits: “I love to hear a choir. I love the humanity… to see the faces of real people devoting themselves to a piece of music. I like the teamwork. It makes me feel optimistic about the human race when I see them cooperating like that.”
Indeed, it is awesome – to quote the buzzword among Americans – how much you can accomplish when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. As Charles A. Garfield points out: “It takes no genius to observe that a one man band never gets very big.”
Indeed, “there is a big difference between hard work and teamwork,” said Jim Lundy, author of ‘T.E.A.M.S., Together Each Achieves More Success.’
The words of the late John Lennon urge: “Come together, right now!”
