My friend Fian is an awesome graphic artist and we got to talking about teamwork.  Fian developed a fun teambuilding cartoon showing a group of men rowing a giant folded bill.

A few observations about this image:

I like the rowing metaphor. In a row boat, if one person is rowing harder on one side, the boat goes around in circles. The lesson? Coordinate efforts to move forward with greater speed and efficiency.

The characters in this cartoon are without emotion (that’s the way I see it). Back in the day, businesses could in fact move forward (compete) without expressing much emotion. Times have changed. The teams (businesses) that are winning express their emotion easily and they have a high “emotional intelligence” (high EQ).

The metaphor of the dollar bill representing the team/business is somewhat dated. Boomers and Gen X probably relate well to the dollar bill metaphor however Millennials (aka Gen Y) aren’t motivated by money like previous generations. Millennials are (in large part) motivated by other things such as life-balance, community, helping the planet, etc.

What do you think of this image?  Leave your comments below.