The Primes: How any Group can Solve any Problem

Chapter 13

Avoiding Tripping Hazards

Tripping hazards are easier to avoid when you know where they are. When it comes to working in groups, can you see them coming?

This chapter will reveal three of the most common tripping hazards that take groups off track. Tripping hazards are like blind spots in that they no longer pose a threat once you know where they are.

After mastering Chapter 13's PRIMES, you will not waste your time on academic leadership development and team-building investments. You will know that the skills of leadership and teamwork are forged in the real work—where there is real cost to failure.

You will also be able to distinguish process from content among collaborating groups and ensure that whoever is responsible for the process must surrender his or her right to contribute content.

Finally, you will never be tempted to make a decision during a planning or problem-solving meeting.

This discipline will require little effort because you will understand the futility of going down any other path and the harmful effects of forgetting what these PRIMES reveal.

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

Henry Ford¹