FROM CAPE GIRARDEAU TO THE MOON

Have you ever tried building bridges from Lincoln logs? What about making a race car suitable for the track based on a design reached by democratic vote?

Cape Girardeau city employees scramble in outer space after their space ship crash lands on the moon. During a team training exercise, employees must decide which of 15 items is most crucial to their survival. Every decision must be reached by consensus among the group.

While it might sound like a silly game, the exercise actually is designed to show how the survival rate for a group is better than that of individuals. The lesson is clear: Groups are more successful.

Cape Girardeau uses the team concept for employee training to show how the actions of one department affect another and how work attitudes of an individual can affect an entire group.

"Everyone has the same understanding of the goal and what they're trying to do" to reach it, said Assistant City Manager Walter Denton, who leads most of the training sessions.

The training sessions put everyone on an equal footing whether department head or crew member, he said. "No one has authority. They are all in equal position to share ideas."

The city started its 18th team-training session last week. The sessions began nearly two years ago and are the brainchild of City Manager Michael Miller.

Department heads were the first to take the training, which has since trickled down the line. Eventually every city employee will have completed the training; so far 191 have graduated.

The process is simple. Employees attend three different meetings that talk about building consensus, discovering a managing or work style and active listening. All are aspects important to good group dynamics.

Once the employees have completed team training, they are welcome to join a team or develop one to study an issue. The teams sit at a round table in a conference room at City Hall when they meet.

They practice consensus and active listening, which lets everyone have an opportunity to share an idea.

"The more different kinds of ideas you hear, the better opportunity you have to make the right decision," Denton said. "Conflict is OK."

Because decisions are reached by consensus, it doesn't mean that everyone agrees wholeheartedly. It does mean that they can accept whatever decision is being made.

Even if you're not a city employee, you've probably seen evidence of the team at work. Teams which range in size from eight to 12 people have been developed to address customer service dilemmas, Y2K problems, a Web page design for the city Web site and the sewer bond issue.

Some teams continue meeting even after their issue has been resolved. The city personnel manual review team has been meeting since 1996 and "gets the endurance award," Denton said.

Department heads from each division of the city staff finance, public works, planning, police, fire, parks and others use team training to reach a decision on an annual budget for Cape Girardeau.

"Everyone has to accept everyone else's budget," Denton said. Some really scrutinize the other departments because accepting a decision to fund public works equipment might mean that parks and recreation or planning does without something they had wanted.

"There are concessions and give and take," he said. "They aren't always happy, but there is ownership. Everyone accepts it."

Moon survival test

City employees start their team training with an exercise about moon survival. The items listed should be ranked individually and then as a group. The exercise is intended to show that teams work better than individuals trying to achieve similar goals.

The scenario: You are a member of a space crew whose mission is to rendezvous with the mother ship on a lighted surface of the moon. Because of mechanical problems, your ship crash-landed 200 miles from the rendezvous site. All equipment, except for 15 items, was destroyed in the crash. You and your crew members must determine which of the 15 items listed below are most crucial for your survival and for reaching the mother ship.

Items

Box of matches

Food concentrate

50 feet of nylon rope

Parachute silk

Portable heating unit

Two .45 caliber pistols

One case dehydrated milk

Two 100-pound oxygen tanks

Stellar map of moon constellations

Life raft

Magnetic compass

Five gallons water

Signal flares

First aid kit with injection needles

Solar-powered FM receiver/transmitter

How would you rank the items? What about the people you work with?