We were in our finals, and it was time for the final year project. After proper research, we agreed on the topic, and we chose the seemingly less stressful one, in vitro test of animal feed instead of testing in vivo. I was never prepared to be the team lead because I know the stress involved, and most importantly, I know my team members to be the people that liked no stress and would rather outsource their works. However, this was not a task to be outsourced.
One, because we were not so many in class and our lecturers knew us by face and full names, so individual tasks were not to be outsourced, else, the student risked failure. Being a team lead to the members that had the mindset of paying off their stress instead of undergoing it themselves was going to be an intense responsibility that I wasn’t ready to accept, but somehow, with the influence of our supervisor, I had to take it up.
At first, the project was going on well when all we had to do was take turns to sun-dry the mixed feed. Even though some students missed their days, I had to take it up because the responsibility was on me, so on those days when they defaulted, I would fill in for them. Honestly, it got so tiring because I stayed a bit far from school when these defaulters lived close to school.
It was supposed to be easier if we were all ready to take responsibility and do the work as and at when due, but even with the division, the labour was still very much lagging, and the team lead took a lot of responsibility to make sure the mixed feed was not caked due to the effect of fungi and was appropriately turned in due periods.
We were done with the school activity, and it was time for lab testing. We were going to use two different laboratories at different locations because we were doing two different tests. We wanted to know the nutrient composition of the feed we mixed, and we needed to see the digestibility too. It was a huge task. We were about five in total, so it shouldn’t take more time, I thought.
Together with one of my teammates, we left for the location of the digestibility testing, while we delegated the other three to go to the nutrient evaluation laboratory. It was going to be very efficient distributing the task among us and less stressful, and it would be easy to get a very correct result. That’s exactly what division of labour is supposed to achieve. Efficiency of job delivery, speed, accuracy, timesaving, and less stress on one person and prevent overall work overload.
But one thing that’s not stressed enough is the willingness of the members to be fully active in delivering their part of the job to prevent delay to ensure that the purpose of the labour division is achieved to the fullest.
As shared, my partner and I took turns to check our feed sample at the laboratory to prevent some possible errors. On the final day, we got the result, and we headed back to school to present it to our supervisor. He asked about our experience, and we narrated to him plus the warnings he gave to us before we left were also very useful.
The remaining members of the team however, returned with their result a day later, and immediately our supervisor saw the result, he threw it out. He said at the top of his voice, “this result was fabricated for you. You will have to go back there and tell them to run it properly once again and then bring it back”. All of us were shocked. Because how did he sense a fabricated result in just one glance?
Well, they had to return the result and bring it back to school a week later. Even though we had a delay with finalizing our work, we eventually got it done.
Division of labour is an efficient tool to fast track your work, and a means of ensuring that nobody overworks himself. However, it is important that members of the team invest fully in playing their part well so that the full aim is achieved.
This is my entry to September Inleo prompt for day 20. Check out the details here.
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