Briefing and lecture sessions become tightly focused on project activities, often taking on the flavor of problem-solving discussions. The need to link Theory and Practice, Research and Experience, is most obvious in this phase. A more important message emerges from descriptions of creative, even ingenious, ways students have found to cooperate in solving their management problems. In virtually every MGPC in the course's history, students have invented new and better ways to work that have been adopted as standard features in later semesters. Above all, the practical lesson of this phase is that open discussion, active listening, vigorous participation, caring, and willing cooperation are essential to success.
Students can clearly see that important aspects of community are manageable.
One or more officers will have been demoted or de facto quit, or removed from the chain of command. And top management will have made unpopular decisions. Absenteeism and apathy may have become causes for concern. Work slowdowns are not rare. There have been two formal strikes.