Musings at Altitude

As I remain so incredibly awed by the miracle of birth and the beauty of both my daughter and her new daughter, I wanted to pause for just a minute to talk about “team” because we’ve seen so many great examples of teamwork over the course of these Olympics and we see so many cases of great teamwork in our every day lives.  Behind each victory, behind each impressive competition, behind each amazing run at some world record, there is a team.

We saw such an impressive example of that last night with Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, who faced the best in the world during this Olympics competition, and each team facing them went down to defeat because of the incredible play and more importantly the phenomenal teamwork of May-Treanor and Walsh.  After the victory and the very emotional celebration (including the spreading of Misty’s Mom’s ashes over the sands of the court), Misty and Kerri came together for a quick interview and talked not about them and their dominating performance but about their coach and the game plan and their love for each other and their passionate team work.  During the match, NBC Sports had commented that two years ago this team that is so gifted and so unselfish in their play almost split up, thinking that they may need others as partners to achieve the ultimate results.  But fortunately for all of us who love to watch them play, they talked through their frustrations, committed to each other, and have once again awed the world with their tremendous play.

But beach volleyball was only one such impressive example of team.  Michael Phelps praised his Mom and his coach.  He also praised his swimming teammates, and if not for the heroic efforts of Jason Lezak in one specific race, the 8 gold medals would still be a dream and Michael Phelps would still be the guy that could not beat the Mark Spitz record.  Michael admitted that this was not an individual accomplishment – it was a lot of hard work and sacrifice from so many in support of that common 8 gold medal objective – a team effort.

Although I’ve been obsessed with the Olympics, it’s not lost on me that this birth in our family and this new miracle of life was also such a tremendous example of teamwork.  Mark and Melissa were so strong together for lots of years prior to marriage and have been now for the just over a year since marriage, and their teamwork has shined so dramatically leading up to this birth as Melissa finished school and prepared the home for family expansion and Mark finished school and entered the workforce in a dramatic way in a remote location. The beautiful result of their great teamwork is Audrey Sue, and she’ll sense and respond well to the teamwork of her parents throughout her life!

As I think through what I’ve witnessed over the last few weeks, I offer these thoughts:

(1) A good friend and business CEO tells me constantly, “You don’t lead alone”.  In fact, I have a coffee cup that I use here at my home office that he gave me with that quote on it.  I’d like to modify that here though and say, “You don’t win alone”.  In pure competition, it’s the hard work, sacrifice and incredible focus of a team of people that lead to the win.  Obviously, natural talent makes a world of difference, but rarely leads to victory by itself.

(2) In victory, the advantage of  team shines so brightly; but in conflict and in defeat, the real measure of team comes forth.  With every team that wins, countless teams lose.  Many of those losing teams have sacrificed and focused equally as much and have performed near flawlessly in competition – and yet they lose.  Great teams win and lose as teams.  Poor teams tear themselves apart in losses.  I’m becoming most impressed with teams that shine so brightly in loss – that’s the real measure of a team.

(3) Good people on good teams realize when changes need to be made to become a great team.  Great people on good teams realize when changes need to be made to allow them to perform at their absolute best.  Great people on great teams realize how beautiful the entirety of that team is, and they want to keep that going as long as possible and yearn to repeat that feeling once again if for any reason it’s gone away.  Misty and Kerry were great players but only a good team till they made changes – now they are an awesome team.  The US Soccer team was a good team with great players till they made changes – now they are an awesome team.  Michael Phelps was a great swimmer with a good team till he made changes – now he’s a great swimmer with the most impressive record in Olympics history because of the changes he made.  Part of being great is being willing to change.

Life is such an incredible journey and it’s so much more special when that journey is shared with teammates you love and so greatly respect, laugh with and cry with, win and lose with.  I have been blessed with such great teammates throughout my life in both business and at home, and I will continue to cherish that great team with great people that achieves great things against all odds and makes life’s journey so spectacularly fun, win or lose!

PS. I can’t help but once again show you a picture of our newest teammate!