The Beauty of TEAMWORK

RANGA SAI TEJA D. challenges our perception of teamwork by looking at it as an evolutionary imperative, as well as a platform for differences, independence, and sharing a collective vision.

- RANGA SAI TEJA D

The moment the word “teamwork” is heard, it reminds us of colleagues working together in an office. However, this is a very limited perspective. I would like to share what I have learnt about teamwork from two different perspectives – from the book The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton and from the Japanese anime, One Piece. In The Biology of Belief, Dr. Lipton describes the evolution of single-celled organisms into multicellular organisms that arose because of the limitation of the cell membrane at storing information in single-celled beings. This limitation led to the need for collaboration and teamwork between cells, which helped them multiply their capacities to learn and store information. And so they overcame their limitation. This chain of integration has continued for millennia, leading to the current state of evolution of various organisms and species. In fact, the beauty of evolution has been based on collaboration among cells. Slowly, in the process, certain cells developed specialist expertise, leading to the creation of organs that would help the organism to thrive.

Now, imagine how spectacular it is when three trillion cells work together. Isn’t that wonderful? Such is a human being! When seen from the perspective of a microbiologist, a human is a conglomeration of many millions of cells working together as a single being.