by The_Metatron wrote:babel wrote:Although playing sports isn't a miracle recipe to create demi-gods, is has the benefit of allowing people to experience working together, communicating with peers, handle conflicts or disappointment from a young age. That, along with reading about it surely is a better base to handle similar situations in later life than with only reading about it?The_Metatron wrote:Banzai! wrote:
what a lot of rubbish, there are 10 other players on your football team and all of you are supposed to be working together to get the ball in the goal and as well as keeping the ball out of your own goal. I work in an office now I am a grown up and all of us are (supposed to be) working together to bring in fees and keep the salaries paid, there are obvious parallels.
Why do businesses do "team building" away days, presumably to try to foster the same sort of team environment that exists on a saturday afternoon on village greens across the country.
Rubbish, eh?
There are ten other people on the other football team that are not helping your ten people score a goal. In fact, they are actively opposing it. As if scoring a goal is some sort of desirable or useful thing to do. Is there another team of accountants trying to stop you from collecting those fees and paying those salaries? Is there another team that might collect or pay them first?
Not buying it. I am perfectly capable of gonig through life without resorting to sports metaphor to figure out to solve problems. There are better ways to do it. I don't need to crush, outrun, defend, outscore, or defeat anyone. Combat is no way to solve problems, even if it is ritual combat.
You want to learn how to solve problems and organize teams to achieve a common, difficult goal? Study the work of the likes of Gen Krantz, or perhaps Chris Craft. No sports coach comes close. Not even close.
And you're wrong about there being no accountants trying to stop you from collecting those fees in time. I assure you.
No, I don't think so. It's how they are taught to work together that I find inadequate. I mentioned Gene Kranz.
After the fire in Apollo 1, Gene Kranz delivered this dictum to his mission control team:Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!' I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.
Not a single sports metaphor. Not one. Does the later performance of Apollo mission control need any discussion? In the face of that sort of leadership, teamwork, and problem solving, sports is worse than useless.
Your response doesn't negate what I wrote though.
I never said that reading up on working together, solving issues etc is not useful or can be fully substituted by doing sports. Experiencing in real life what it means to work together, by operating in a team is an invaluable addition to the academic understanding of cooperation, interpersonal relationship management and issue handling you can gain from reading about it.
