Leadership

Why Busted March Madness Brackets Are Good For Your Team

By Wayne Turmel

Updated on: March 21, 2011 / 3:01 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Each year about this time, newspapers and the blogosphere are full of stories about how much productivity is lost during the NCAA basketball tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. I'd like to suggest that all of that score checking, bracket copying and heartbreak might actually be good for your team, especially if they work remotely.

For those in other countries who don't understand, college basketball is big business here in the US and sucks up a lot of time and mind share. (Note to Americans, the rest of the world doesn't really care because in their countries, people go to college to ...you know... go to college and learn stuff). All of the bluster, teasing and checking scores in the middle of the work day should be stamped out and discouraged, right? Not so fast.

Here's why the tournament and its attendant silliness might actually help your team:

It's not about work...that's kind of the point. Many times we focus on the task at hand to the point of discouraging social interaction. Even when it's our turn to update the team on our work we edit ourselves so as not to take up valuable time on conference calls. At tournament time, there is no work to be done. It's about fun. You remember fun don't you? It actually inspires people to enjoy themselves. Oh, and when that guy in the Charlotte office calls to gloat about North Carolina, you may also have a conversation about the Johnson file.
You can use it to get people to introduce technology. Can't get people to use Sharepoint? Amazingly they'll beat the door down if that's where you keep the rankings of who is winning the office pool. Once they learn the tool, they're much more likely to use it for its intended purposes. For those in HR listening, we refer of course to the non-gambling, non-monetary ,theoretical brackets. Anything else would be wrong.
Embarrassing the boss has its advantages. People love it when authority figures are exposed as human, and if my bracket this year shows anything it's that I'm human. Really, really, human. (Seriously, why do I keep putting my faith in the Big East? It's not like I went to school there). Communicating with the team in friendly competition is a great way to lower boundaries and break down barriers caused by different roles. That is, as long as you take it with a smile and don't throw a hissy fit.
You know this isn't about basketball, right? In fact, if you have an international team the NCAA Tournament isn't a great example of a teamwork exercise, unless you're also prepared to have brackets on the Cricket World Cup and give your South African and Pakistani employees a chance to be in charge once in a while. The whole exercise is designed to get people to know each other a little better. When that quiet person in the Lexington office that nobody really knows wins the competition, maybe someone will return her phone calls.

The point is, that you want something fun, participative, easy to play and encourages communication and camaraderie. Conversations that start about where you went to college can end in solving difficult problems or getting the information people need to finish their projects in a timely manner. Surely that's worth a few minutes wasted on fun.

photo by flickr user Mr. Wright CC 2.0