S O P H O M O R E S : good? Or GREAT?

Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

- Vince Lombardi

As previously stated in Vince Lombardi's quote, what makes a team, a grade level or even a company work, lies on the devotion of each individual member. It's every grain of sand what makes a dessert, and likewise every bit of energy put together has the capacity of forming an amazing whole when it comes to a group of people. Now that I am nearing the conclusion to the secret to success in companies brought to me by the book being read by our Innovation Academy class; Good to Great, I can ask myself is the team I am part of a great team? 

This happens to be a very large group of individuals, which makes the question being posed even harder to answer. I consider the sophomores class an amazing compilation of students, however does it really follow the 8 presented factors that make up a great company? 

I am aware that the aspects Jim Collins describes through the course of his book are mostly meant to show how good organisations follow, or can follow similar steps to achieving greatness,  however after reading a few chapters of the non-fiction, I found that most explanations and analogies could be applied to life itself taking in hand this is quite an adaptable and versatile book.

When it comes to leading such an extensive quantity of students, hierarchy may  and possibly will result, causing different rankings based upon power over the large population. However within our prom, even though teacher leaders and student body government do take control, and democracy takes place in choosing the grade leaders, I feel as if everybody in our grade level has a voice. A say. 

I trust that not only are we surrounded by amazing governors of prom 2017, however each student that forms part of that team has great capacity and potential, meaning level 5 leaders and amazing workers in a company scenario. 

Looking at the who and the what of our grade, we don't have choice about the people who get inside the bus, but still, with every purpose we have, with every goal we hope to achieve, every single individual takes part in its completion, seeing as the team we have been placed into is filled with disciplined people. The direction the bus is being taken isn't our choice per say, however, how we take it there is in our power, and I have to say this ICC, prom 2017 drove the bus right into success!  

Speaking of ICC, this was a perfect opportunity to face brutal facts. We took what we learned from the terrible outcome of last years inter class competitions and applied it in order to be driven into greatness, and the results showed how our strategy payed out.

The hedgehog concept is something that is hard to apply to the sophomore scenario, but I still believe that we had the ability to demonstrate this factor, however turning the unessential luxuries into the members of our team. For the activities, the same person could only sign up for three competitions, and we all divided the tasks in the way we thought most affordable, not placing the most essential participants into the least important activities on ICC.  We also applied the purpose, the purpose of being united and together achieving more.

So overall, I do believe we briefly follow the steps to greatness, and I do admit that my grade level is not a perfect one, after all we are a group of about 100 tenth grade students, and perfection is almost unachievable. This is a factor I disagree with in the book good to great, Jim Collins is so focused about persuading the reader that he does not focus on the flaws companies have. There is no perfect company, and I believe that the recognition of the flaws is another step to greatness.

So why does this happen? Is culture itself beginning to shift in order to create greater communities? I personally believe that in such large group of individuals, everybody is entitled to their own opinions, and much as humans evolved by adapting to their surroundings, we students are evolving too. Maybe not in physical aspects, however in mental characteristics, in technology, in the way ww think and as we see our world slowly changing into a better place, we want to move on as well, and the influence of school wide innovation and the breaking of tradition makes us transition into an amazing group of students.