Business is a Team Sport

There are a lot of ways to write about this. The obvious one is to make football or basketball analogies, and then have the discussion evolve to leadership with quarterbacks and point guards. Somehow, I think all this has already been done.

As such, I am not going to go in that direction, but more importantly want to contextualize "team" and what it means to "our" sport.  So, let me start here: a team is a group of people who work together with the common goal of winning a game.  Our game is money.

Teams practice and have coordinated strategies (plays) that define what everyone's role is for bursts of time.  The question then becomes, what "plays" do we run and how do we coordinate among ourselves in our business?  And, even before this, what drills do we run in practice to sharpen and refine fundamental skills and mechanics?

All of this is completely analogous to athletics.  However, there are plenty of opportunities to learn about individual skills.  The key to all of this, from my frame of reference, is how we coordinate our teams on a state-wide, national or worldwide basis?  Some call it support, some call it being an effective sponsor... whatever the case, it should be obvious that we all do not end up in the showers together at the end of practice and give each other a lift home.

We talk about our business being a relationship business.  We talk about the importance of understanding community as a core construct.  Building a team (or) being a part of a team is simply another way to express the same thing.

If you want to have success, you need to embrace the fact that you can not "go-it-alone" and inherent in the process is a great deal of communication and coordination.  Business is a team sport.