I’ve written in this forum before about the three values I hold dear—respect, teamwork and innovation. Of these three, teamwork is where important things really start to get done.
Our team in the Department of Marketing and Communications recently created a variety of content to commemorate the 125th anniversary of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. The body of work exemplifies all of the best qualities that come to mind when I think of team collaboration.
I’m always impressed with the gifts and breadth of the people in our department, but what was most remarkable in this case was the way that their individual talents were magnified many times over through the collective lens of the group.
The interactive online timeline that was created, for instance, balanced the curatorial gifts of our content specialists, the institutional knowledge of our resident historians and the programming ingenuity of our Web team.
Our commemorative print calendar required the expertise of longtime editorial and design team members, who—having been so immersed in our culture—captured the spirit of the hospital in a stunning series of archival photographs and historical captions.
Our video team created beautiful and emotionally resonant works documenting the milestone, interviewing people from across The Johns Hopkins Hospital and the school of medicine.
These projects were bolstered by the tremendous talent of our design team, who at every turn helped make them aesthetically arresting and engaging.
If you remove any one of the elements from any of these pieces, the work is remarkable, but when they dynamically come together in harmony—just as a symphony orchestra might—the essence of 125 years of one of the most influential places in modern medicine is displayed.
I know that the power of teamwork to amplify the talents of individuals isn’t a new revelation. I think of author Napoleon Hill, who wrote about what he referred to as “master mind groups.” These groups, he said, “develop the harmonious cooperation of two or more people who ally themselves for the purpose of accomplishing any given task.”
But just because it isn’t new, it doesn’t make it any less profound when you see it in motion. I bet that Hill would have agreed with me, and after you’ve taken a look at what our team accomplished, I hope that you will, too!
Out-of-the-Box Perspectives 