What an Ancient Construction Project Can Teach Us About Teamwork

A 4,000-year-old drainage system in China presents far more than an opportunity to learn about Neolithic engineering capabilities and construction techniques. It holds an object lesson for business leaders and managers today – a lesson about assembling effective teams and empowering them to generate and implement solutions from the ground up.

When the drainage system at the Pingliangtai site was discovered in 2020, Chinese archaeologists said it was the oldest such system in that country. Now, research has turned up another stunning finding: The feat appears to have been accomplished in a city without a clearly defined hierarchical structure nor a state authority.

That would make it unique among known ancient drainage and water products, which are known to have been constructed under centralized, hierarchical, and sometimes even authoritarian governments. It would also mean that similar levels of coordination and cooperation were needed to build the walls and dig a surrounding moat for the settlement of about 500 people.

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Unchanged over millenia: the key components of innovation

If no strong central leadership was required for this project, which involved a system of ditches and ceramic pipes (advanced technology for the times), what made it work once the need for it was identified? The same seven things that make every advance work today:

1. Innovation: We don’t have the name of the ancient innovator who first thought of the system at Pingliangtai, but someone had to conceive it. Innovators see the world differently – but they need help to bring those visions to life. The most important thing to remember about innovative ideas is that they can come from any level in a company, from the custodian’s office to the C-suite.
2. Collaboration: “Idea people” aren’t always able to fill in all the details. Creative minds need the support of analytical minds to work out the nuts and bolts of making innovative ideas work.
3. Persuasion: The people who conceived and worked out the system had to get buy-in for the labor-intensive plan. That meant selling its benefits to the people who would have to carry out the work. It still means that, 4,000 years later.
4. Adoption: Even without a formal hierarchy, there will always be people whose opinions carry extra weight. Technology might have changed significantly over 40 centuries, but human nature hasn’t. Change always needs champions to move forward.
5. Cooperation: As every movement or advancement needs leaders, even unofficial leaders, it also needs followers. Members of the Pingliangtai community had to accept their individual responsibilities: planning for the thinkers, manufacturing for the craftspeople, excavation and installation for the laborers.
6. Coordination: From the beginning of planning in earnest until the final rollout, someone has to make sure people are working toward the same goal and resources are being used correctly and efficiently. That someone has to see the big picture as well as its smaller components.
7. Implementation: An innovative idea is just an idea until it’s fully put into practice. That means seeing construction, testing and any needed improvements through to completion. It also means conducting ongoing maintenance.

The lesson of Pingliangtai is simple: If leaders and managers want effective teams and organizations, they need to recruit, hire and skillfully manage a wide range of not just skill sets, but of personalities: creatives, analysts, innate leaders and committed followers.

Then they need to put those various personalities in situations where they’re suited and can thrive, not in one-size-fits-all boxes.

Finally, those teams must be empowered to generate ideas on their own and to run with them, handling the entire seven-step process with minimal intervention. This not only builds stronger teams, but also frees up company leadership to focus on more strategic matters.

Those benefits never get old.

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