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Aug 21, 2023
Steve Brisendine, Content Creator at SkillPath
A 4,000-year-old drainage system in China presents far more than an opportunity to learn about Neolithic engineering capabilities and construction techniques. It holds an object lesson for business leaders and managers today – a lesson about assembling effective teams and empowering them to generate and implement solutions from the ground up.
When the drainage system at the Pingliangtai site was discovered in 2020, Chinese archaeologists said it was the oldest such system in that country. Now, research has turned up another stunning finding: The feat appears to have been accomplished in a city without a clearly defined hierarchical structure nor a state authority.
That would make it unique among known ancient drainage and water products, which are known to have been constructed under centralized, hierarchical, and sometimes even authoritarian governments. It would also mean that similar levels of coordination and cooperation were needed to build the walls and dig a surrounding moat for the settlement of about 500 people.
If no strong central leadership was required for this project, which involved a system of ditches and ceramic pipes (advanced technology for the times), what made it work once the need for it was identified? The same seven things that make every advance work today:
The lesson of Pingliangtai is simple: If leaders and managers want effective teams and organizations, they need to recruit, hire and skillfully manage a wide range of not just skill sets, but of personalities: creatives, analysts, innate leaders and committed followers.
Then they need to put those various personalities in situations where they’re suited and can thrive, not in one-size-fits-all boxes.
Finally, those teams must be empowered to generate ideas on their own and to run with them, handling the entire seven-step process with minimal intervention. This not only builds stronger teams, but also frees up company leadership to focus on more strategic matters.
Those benefits never get old.
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Steve Brisendine
Content Creator at SkillPath
Steve Brisendine is a Content Creator at Skillpath. Drawing on a 32-year professional writing and journalism history, he now focuses on helping businesses discover new learning opportunities, with an emphasis on relationships and communication.
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