Indeed high performing teams can not be high performing over a longer period of time unless they 'designed' their organization for success. From sports we know the saying that the team is "as strong as its bench". In sports it would mean that you could replace anyone in your team by someone else, the bench player, without (substantially) weakening the team. All multiple year top teams can afford this, because the value of the high performance exceeds the costs of having an expensive bench, doesn't it?! Now back to business, are you mentally prepared to make the comparison to your own team? So who is on your bench? What...?! Empty...?! Continually saving costs made our benches empty without bothering about the value of the bench. So what happens in case your team is suffering from 'injuries' (sickness, long leave or alike)? The team has to compensate for it by working harder or longer or the team's performance will drop pretty rapidly. Even if the team could compensate for a while they would become exhausted [...]

In her interview after her winning race Daphne Schippers, the Dutch World Champion Athlete 200m sprint, said what we know but don't always practice yet. Being asked what she did in her race to win she mentioned a few things, but to me most striking was that she focused on being 'relaxed'. Especially the last 30 m of her race she had to focus on the right muscle tension which made her even accelerate. It was not the thinking about 'winning', no it was the focus on her 'process ' of running and by have the right relaxation she could accelerate. Winning is the result of great preparation and an excellent focus on your process. Too much focus on end result instead of the process might have cramped her muscles and could have had a counter effect, slowing her down. Now try to stand up, tense your leg muscles to the max and try to run 100m. Cumbersome isn't it?! Our brains work similar, too much tension (stress) on our thinking muscles (brain) will [...]

Try to imagine that our top-team starts to play a game and another one and another one, but no one there to give feedback, develop the individuals in the team, adjust the direction during the break or coach and lead the team to a higher performing team.... difficult to imagine that any top playing team would be in that situation. After my previous posts I guess you know what's coming now.... indeed, we do face similar situations in day-to-day business. Oh yes , the average companies do have managers, plenty, responsible for budgets, strategy, purchases and so on, and indeed once every while (monthly?) they look at the results of their team..... 20 games (days @ work) playing without a coach, at least 19 missed opportunities to give immediate feedback...and 19 missed opportunities to steer the team's direction during the game before the result is there; using 'the break' in order to improve the performance day by day as from day 1, but still expecting high performing teams? Seems rather optimistic I believe. Similar [...]

Once a famous Dutch football player said "it is nice to be fast , but it is better to be on time on the right spot". Indeed he was not one of the fastest players ever, but he was mostly on time on the right spot; skills that made him play the world championship final in 1974 so there must be something in it. Now imagine you are not always on time on the right spot or your skill set is not good enough to do things right 1st time? The natural respond of a high performer would be to compensate for it. We start to tackle to get the ball, putting ourselves on the ground, whereas the game really is designed to play upright if and where possible. It costs more energy to make a tackle and puts you in a disadvantageous position (on the ground) and on top if you are not 100% successful with your tackle...to compensate for it you again you would have to get up very quickly, make a [...]

Now picture this: a team playing game and at the end of the game you would ask them 'how did it go, did you win or loose?'. Every team member of a high performing team would know the answer wouldn't they? Now back to business... Many teams suffer from URS! The 'Unknown Result Syndrome' is pretty frustrating for people in the team as well as for the manager. fighting rumors, complaints or negative feedback is a pretty tough activity. Assuming we play 20 games a month (20 working days) how often do we know whether we had a good or a bad day? Did we win or loose? Too often teams simply don't have a clue and why? Because we don't measure, that's the simple answer to it. Of course your team does measure it by looking at monthly KPI's... aha monthly... so your team performs 20 games and only every 20 games they know how they genuinely did perform? Turning it around I would argue that you then missed 19 opportunities to give [...]