5 Choose to Contribute, Activate, and Connect Across the Business

Can a team choose to be great? Yes: unequivocally. (If a teammate disagrees, be concerned.) The Chicago Cubs were a team that made that decision. On the night of November 2, 2016, they became bigger than baseball. They modeled for the rest of us that when we are deliberate and focused on making certain decisions, we can win. And win big. After 108 years of losing, the Chicago Cubs became the champions of baseball.

Game Seven will be remembered as one of the greatest games ever played in any sport. After seven months, 177 games, over 1,593 innings, and approximately 25,842 pitches, the Holy Grail of baseball—the World Series Championship—would be decided in extra innings of the last game.

The drama was thick. The Cubs had been down three games to one in the best of seven series, but had scrapped and clawed their way back to tie the series at three games apiece and force a deciding game seven. Then, in the winner-takes-all game, it appeared an entire city and the legion of fans around the world would be doomed again to their century-old heartache.

In that monumental game, the Cubs pulled ahead, 6–3, only to see their opponent, the Cleveland Indians, come back to tie the game in the eighth inning. The ninth inning went scoreless.

That’s when time stopped. Before the game could go into the tenth inning, it began to rain. The teams retreated into their respective clubhouses. And the sporting world held its breath.

This was precisely the moment the Cubs refocused on the three decisions that differentiated them as champions. Behind closed doors, team veteran Jason Heyward called the team together and contributed a perspective to his peers that activated their hearts. “I told them to remember how good they were—how good we are,” Heyward said after the game. “I wanted them to know how proud of them I was and that I loved them. And that I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”¹

Heyward said each of them had played a part in bringing the Cubs to this moment in time. And that they had everything they needed to win, as long as they believed in each other and played for one another.

Teammate David Ross provided more details of Heyward’s efforts to activate the team. He said, “[Heyward] told us, ‘We’re the best team in baseball for a reason. Continue to play our game, support one another. These are your brothers here, fight for your brothers, lift them up, continue to stay positive. We’ve been doing this all year so continue to be us.’”

The Cubs knew their role in history. As players, they were connected to the 108 other Cubs teams that came before them, who had failed in achieving this big thing. Entire generations of die-hard fans had lived their whole lives without seeing their beloved team receive the ultimate recognition. These circumstances create a pressure few teams will ever know.

But Heyward would have none of it. He equipped the team to focus on a decision they could control.

He encouraged teammates to be the Cubs team they’ve been all season rather than trying too hard to do something new in the last game. Shortstop Addison Russell reported, “We reached new levels. Grown men talking about that stuff, it doesn’t happen. The fact we did it here in the World Series, I really respect everyone for that.”

What took place in the clubhouse was more than a motivational discussion. It was a decision-making process. During that brief and now historic 17-minute rain delay, Heyward brought the team back to the important decisions they’d been making all year. The formula for success didn’t need to be changed now. As a result, the mood changed back to confidence. The team possessed a renewed determination.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew we were ready to do what we did,” Heyward said.

As the team was preparing to go back onto the field, hearts were pounding—not from nerves, but from the belief that they could control their fate. Catcher Willson Contreras later said that in that moment, he was thinking, “Now we are here and we can do this. We’ve got this.”²

Indeed, they did. The Cubs scored two runs in the top of the tenth; the Indians could only manage one. The Cubs, when it mattered most, chose to be great. And they were.

Teams That Do Big Things Make Three Big Decisions

There’s no doubt: The Cubs had great talent. They had proven leadership, too. But history is full of teams, in all professions, that had those two qualities and never made it to the pinnacle in their work. Every profession has seen such teams flatline and slide away forgotten. Equally true, the past is full of remarkable teams, again in all arenas, that didn’t have exceptional talent or leadership, yet still found a way to succeed in big ways.

What’s the common denominator? What is it those teams do, regardless of talent and leadership levels, that enables them to do big things? Nearly every team that we’ve studied that’s achieved something extraordinary had team members that made three specific decisions. And in doing so, they amplified the leadership and talent they had, which put them in a far better position to succeed.

Those decisions are the 3 Do Big Things Decisions (DBT Decisions). We’ve captured them here so every team can deliver on their decision to be great.

3 Do Big Things Decisions

• The Contributor Decision: I choose to bring my best to this situation.

• The Activator Decision: I choose to bring out the best in others in this situation.

• The Connector Decision: We choose to partner across the business to deliver our shared objective.

To win the World Series Championship, the members of the Chicago Cubs baseball team made the 3 DBT Decisions. As members of the team testified, each person on the team contributed to their success. The rain delay in game seven of the championship provided a prime moment in which we all got a glimpse of how the team activated the best in each other. And the roster of 25 players is merely a small portion of the roughly 250 employees (and millions of fans) connected within and across the organization. It took all their efforts working in unison to win.

Can you imagine your team achieving the big thing in front of you without every teammate making these critical decisions? Here’s a fact: Your team’s leadership and talent is only as good as its team members’ ability to make the 3 DBT Decisions. This is what’s remarkable and key: The choices to bring the best to a situation, bring out the best in others, and partner across the business—or not—are already being made by every person on every team in the company all the time. The game-changing question is this: Is every teammate making the choice of “I will” instead of “I won’t” so the team and company can prevail?

The good news is, we’ve collected enough evidence that clearly proves: There’s a high probability your team members want to make these decisions more frequently. They just need to be equipped to do so.

The 3 DBT Decisions enable team members to cut through the noise and do what’s right and best for the team. And in most workplaces, there’s a lot of noise. If your teammates are like most, experts say they make roughly 35,000 decisions a day.³ Once enabled to make the 3 DBT Decisions, our experience shows that a large volume of those decisions are made more effectively, quickly, and in ways that improve a person’s ability to do what they want to do: demonstrate the greatness they have within them.

The Contributor Decision

Choosing to bring your best to the situation you’re in is making the choice to give of yourself. It’s selflessness in action, knowing you’re a part of something bigger than you. For many, this decision is the act of determining you won’t compromise your values—that you will be true to yourself and live authentically. This is when you resolve to be who you know you are, where you put your whole heart into the matter at hand.

There’s no doubt that when the team has quality strategies, plans, and processes, team members are more apt to make the Contributor Decision. It’s also equally true that a team can have quality strategies, plans, and processes and team members still don’t bring their best. What have you experienced with your team?

Those we’ve observed who make the Contributor Decision more consistently than others, and who we have subsequently interviewed, report feeling a sense of freedom for having made the decision. They say they are less likely to let the circumstances or others determine their actions. By letting go of what others think they should do or think is best for them, they are more effective at making decisions for themselves that are aligned with their values.

This decision to bring your best often has a transformative effect, because as humans we function in systems that increasingly connect all of us. In this regard, by making the decision, the energy you exert in your behaviors has a ripple effect. As others experience your better you, they are often inspired to do the same. And the ripple often becomes a wave of energy across the team. This means that each time you make the Contributor Decision, you are likely being a better teammate (or mother, father, husband, wife, friend, and so on). Your contribution to the team’s ability to do big things increases, as does personal fulfillment.

Here are some examples of the Contributor Decision in action:

• Instead of staying quiet about my concern about our plan, I’m going to share my perspective.

• I’m going home now, and leaving my laptop in the office.

• In the project review meeting, instead of endlessly focusing on where we’re failing, I’m going to celebrate and acknowledge this team for their diligent work.

We often hear from those teams we serve that this decision is easy to make, because it’s a choice they recognize they’ve made before—or missed before. What’s insightful for all is how profound the outcomes are as the decision is more consistently demonstrated. The power comes in developing the self-awareness and the skill (which we’ll discuss later in this chapter and throughout the remainder of the DBT Framework) to make the conscious decision to contribute more fully and more often.

The Activator Decision

Choosing to bring out the best in others means you’re making the choice to activate their greater potential. It’s a decision that begins with an understanding that others have stored or unrealized greatness. This sort of belief is in high demand in workplaces today, as it is a powerful mechanism to ensure the team becomes far greater than the sum of the people on the team.

The choice to bring out the best in others is a declaration. Others are informed through your actions that you care enough about the person or people you’re interacting with to focus or adapt your behaviors. This means that the decision to activate the best in others is not a manipulative maneuver for selfish gain; rather, it is founded in the understanding that by bringing out the best in others, something far greater can be developed than could possibly be realized by you alone.

Here are some examples of what the Activator Decision looks like in action:

• Rather than giving advice, I’m going to ask my colleague a question, and then allow their answer to stand without adding to their wisdom.

• I’m going to resist the temptation of telling everyone how I contributed, and instead let my teammate be the hero.

• On my drive home, I’m not going to dwell on what went wrong today; instead, I’m going to prepare myself to be present with my family.

Those who make the Activator Decision do not discriminate in its application. Beyond their teammates, they bring out the best in those who lead them as well as those whose roles hold stereotypes as being undervalued. Because the person who makes the Activator Decision believes each of their teammates’ value can be realized, they work to bring that value forth, so these teammates become even more valuable to the team.

The Connector Decision

The choice to partner across the business is the collective decision by the team to form a broader team that delivers a shared goal. It’s a decision that communicates to others certain beliefs: We are confident in who we are as a team. We won’t play a zero-sum game. We are stronger together.

This decision requires an enterprise mindset, where the team can see its role in the larger organization. There are no fences to throw work over, no misguided positioning for budget dollars, and no beliefs that other functions are mischievously plotting to make things more difficult for all. There’s only one team with a shared objective.

Here are some examples of what the Connector Decision looks like in action:

• Before we further build out our plans, let’s seek input from operations and see how they might improve upon the idea.

• Instead of complaining about how the work in finance is slowing us down, let’s take the initiative and meet with them to see how we can improve this for everyone.

• As we innovate the engineering of our product, let’s include the sales team because they’re closest to the customer.

The teams that make the Connector Decision believe the intelligence of the larger group holds the potential to transform what the organization can achieve and do in the market. Therefore, members of these teams have redefined the psychological boundaries those with more traditional views hold. As a result, they require less time to develop trust in those with whom they have little history, seek collaborative opportunities, and function with the understanding that when the larger whole benefits, so will they.

Your Most Important Role

What’s the most important role you play at work? “I’m an individual contributor.” “I’m a manager.” “I’m an executive.” “I’m the finance go-to.” “I’m a project management guy.” “I’m HR.” Should you find yourself on a team that provides such answers, pull up your boots, take a deep breath, and self-inspire because you’ve got important work to do.

These responses come from well-intentioned employees who have been taught and conditioned by their organization to be responsible for their own careers. Such an approach drives wonderful individual accountability yet can also embed the negative consequences of placing a premium on individual performance, rather than putting the focus on the team. There’s no doubt we all want self-guided teammates with fires in their bellies. But if we are to do significant work as a team, we also need something else.

The most critical role you play is teammate. When a majority of team members embrace this mindset, the research shows that the team sets the conditions for optimizing its collective talents. Team members impact the business far more, and they elevate their personal contributions (and, ironically, usually elevate their careers, too).

To be certain then, the 3 DBT Decisions are not roles. They’re decisions. Delivering on your functional role is the responsibility of your job. Yet, it is the duty of each teammate, regardless of role, to use their power to bring their best, bring out the best in others, and ensure the team is connected to the whole.⁴

Here’s an example of this in action. While supporting a senior director within a global manufacturing company, we asked him: What’s the secret to your rapid career growth?

He smiled, looked over each shoulder for effect, as if he was going to tell us a big secret. Then he leaned across the table and said, “Well, let me tell you it isn’t because my resume looks great. I haven’t dusted that off and revised it for 18 years.” He laughed.

“Seriously, though,” he added, “My formula is pretty simple. I’ve always concentrated on being a great team player first—at giving my best and being there for others. That’s it.

“Right out of school, it didn’t take me long to figure out that the leaders of this organization crave this approach. When my first boss got promoted, she took me with her. And then I’d find myself on a cross-functional team. I’d use my formula, and sure enough I’d find myself being recruited or recommended to other teams. One team led to another. And here I am.” He paused, then shrugged his shoulders. “Pretty simple, huh?”

Simple, perhaps—and yet, profound. So much so, it’s worth asking: Of two different roles, which one do the members of your team identify with most:

• Their individual functional role?

• The team they are a part of?

The answer allows you to determine, with relative accuracy, how prepared the team is to make the decisions necessary for the team to do big things. Those who prioritize being exceptional teammates, while bringing accountability to their functional role with them, are the people the rest of us want on our team.

Doing Big Things Is an All-the-Time Thing

Each of us always has freedom of choice, but we never have freedom from the consequences of our choices. Every decision a teammate makes, therefore, takes the team further from realizing the team’s potential—or closer to being able to do big things. This is why doing big things is not a sometimes thing. Teammates who approach daily interactions with a casualness or laziness are on a team that will lose to teams where every interaction matters. That’s because doing big things is an all-the-time thing.¹³ This wisdom forms a standard of conduct on teams that do big things.

No one expects perfection. And it’s not about infusing stress and tension into daily routines. It’s about the direction the team is going and its ability to advance the organization’s health. And your direction is determined by your ability to make the 3 DBT Decisions.

The Contributor Decision: A Closer Look

The phone call was disturbing. “I’m in an organization that has flatlined. And now I’m flatlining, too.”

The voice belonged to Roy. We’d met him years before at a different organization, one with its whole heart in it. He left because he thought he’d have more career opportunities elsewhere. His voice was filled with regret. “Bring my best here? That’s not realistic,” he said. “Not when the rewards encourage everyone to compete—for visibility, advancement, bonuses.

“It’s cutthroat around here. It’s not safe to give your best because that means exposing yourself. If you fail, and it’s public, the consequences are going to be severe,” he said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you. Unless, of course, it’s exactly what they want to hear up on the top floor,” he said. It was quiet for a moment. “I submitted my resignation. I’m out of here,” he finished.

On the surface this first DBT Decision can look easy, but most of us know it’s not. The brutal truth is that, in some organizations, bringing your best can appear to be career limiting. Yet, an additional truth must also be examined: We as humans are very good at rationalizing why external circumstances should determine the choices we make in our attitudes and actions.

No one is judging Roy. We’ve all been in situations where we need to set boundaries and take care of ourselves. Roy will continue his search for a team and company that fits his needs. (We’ll continue to support him, too, in his journey to self-actualization.) For those of us who don’t have, or won’t make, the option to leave, we must set a different course.

Ultimately, making the Contributor Decision means choosing what to do at the intersection of our personal needs, the needs of the team, and the business. Consider these examples:

• There will be times when I need to say what needs to be said—while other moments will require that I listen for greater understanding.

• There will be meetings where I must mandate what must be done—and other meetings where I must start a collaborative discussion.

• There are moments when I must be willing to be wrong in the interest of advancing ideas—and other times when I must be perfectly accurate in my contributions.

How a team member decides to be at their best and contribute can’t be prescriptive; the intersection of personal, team, and business needs is a perspective unique to each teammate. With that in mind, to what extent does your team practice these examples of successful decision-making? And how will it advance the teamwork you’re seeking if everyone more effectively makes such decisions?

Our conservative estimate is that on average, people are making the Contributor Decision, deciding to bring their best to the situations with team members, 30 to 40 percent of the time. On teams that do big things, that number soars to over 80 percent. This single, simple decision provides the genesis (an ignition) that accelerates rapid thinking and behavioral change across a team.

How to Make the Contributor Decision More Consistently

Here are three key questions for you:

1. Do you believe you’re bringing your best to daily situations?

2. How do you know?

3. Do your teammates believe you’re bringing your best as you interact with them?

Perceptions form reality, though not always the complete or accurate reality—or the reality the team needs to do big things. Therefore, the personal (and life-long) pursuit of knowing how to bring your best, understanding when you are, and ensuring your teammates can trust you to do so, identifies you as one who has potential to be a big-time teammate. This means you likely have strong self-awareness, the personal integrity to stay true to yourself, and are inclined to model the emotional courage necessary to be honest with yourself and others. Couple these skills with the technical mastery required to do your job well, and you are a big-time teammate.

The Contributor Decision leverages the wisdom that rather than learning about values, it’s far faster and more effective to focus on demonstrating the values you inherently possess, and grow those values through the experience of application.

To go further in strengthening your ability to make the Contributor Decision, use these five questions to build even greater self-awareness, focus, and a plan for doing so:

1. In what situations would those close to you confirm that you are bringing your best?

2. How do you manage to bring your best in those situations?

3. What is the next situation in which you want to be more effective at bringing your best—and would significantly elevate the team’s effectiveness?

4. Why is it important to you to gain greater mastery in this area?

5. What is your measurable plan to accomplish your objective identified in step 3?

Ultimately, if we don’t choose to bring our best to any situation, then we are choosing to diminish who we are. There’s no middle ground here. No room for excuses. To be on a team that does big things, each of us must transcend the desire to be cautious, to be less of ourselves. If we succumb to temptations to wait, to measure what others think of us, or to step back to see how those who go before us fare, we will surely fail. The measure of a successful team is in direct correlation to the team members’ levels of self-awareness, emotional courage, and personal integrity—the ability to make the Contributor Decision.

You can do this. You already are.

The Activator Decision: A Closer Look

The death of a trauma surgeon is not typically required to make the second of the 3 DBT Decisions (the choice to bring out the best in others). In Dr. O’s case, though, that’s what was necessary.

Before anyone calls the police, we’re not talking about an actual murder. In this case, it was Dr. O’s determination to transcend the part of his ego that caused him to think of himself far more often than he thought of others. “I had to bring to an end the way I was engaging with others,” Dr. O said. “Because what I was doing was wrong.”

In Dr. O’s previous career, he was recognized as one of the world’s leading surgeons. Because he was aware of his status, and felt entitled because of it, his wish was his command; others were always at the ready to do as he instructed. He agreed, however, to be recruited from his work as a surgeon to the commercial world of business, because he wanted to do something even bigger: He longed to see patients in hospitals receive the nutrition he knew could save thousands of lives every year.

Dr. O saw something big that others didn’t see: If hospitals would shift the formula in the nutrition patients were receiving during their recovery from a diet heavy in sugar to one with more concentrated protein, the body would regain and sustain levels of health more quickly. His motivation was to save lives.

It didn’t take long for Dr. O to fail. Even though he knew the breakthrough solution the company needed to achieve their growth goals, and he had the research to prove it, he was playing the role of teammate in a way that meant the team would certainly flatline. Specifically, while Dr. O was showing up inspired, his actions weren’t inspiring others. In fact, he was deactivating teammates.

His attitude and actions had people around him pulling back, and taking their hearts with them. “He talks down to us. And that immediately disengages me,” said one teammate. Another added, “He’s compelled to talk forever, and always has to have the last word. He has to make it obvious he’s the smartest person in the room.”

Dr. O was desperate for influence. And all he knew was the approach that worked for him as a famous doctor. The results were devastating.

Chances are, over the course of your career you’ve known someone like Dr. O. They’re brilliant and have big ideas. But they don’t yet have the skill to bring out the best in others. Consequently, their big idea to save the world might as well be a small one. Because nothing significant gets done.

Our conservative estimate is that, on the average team, people are making the Activator Decision roughly 20 to 30 percent of the time. Of note, this is highly conditional: The decision is made far more frequently among people with whom teammates have a history of trust. This creates a challenge for many workplaces today, of course, because often, people are joining and leaving teams with increased frequency, not allowing for such relationships to be established.

Additionally, there is heightened emphasis on individual visibility for recognition and promotion, creating competition among teammates. This diminishes motives to bring out the best in others. Teams that do big things overcome these conditions and make the Activator Decision with their teammates nearly 80 percent of the time.

There is something you should know about Dr. O. As his self-awareness grew through questions like those used to support the Contributor Decision, he discovered something: He cared more about getting his big idea into the world than he did about receiving fame and glory. With this insight, his self-awareness went to levels where he could see things he couldn’t see before. Specifically, he began to have greater empathy for the others on the team.

“My gosh,” Dr. O told us, “I’m in the business of saving lives, yet the way I was treating others in the process of delivering on my objective was diminishing the lives of others. Truly, the biggest thing for me now is I really want the people around me to win. It’s not about me.”

Like most of us, Dr. O cares deeply about people. When he moved from seeing his peers as employees who existed to make his will be done, and began to see them as people, he could more successfully make the Activator Decision. Not surprisingly, people began to respond differently to him. With each interaction, he earned from them the right to influence them more.

With this new and different power, Dr. O could contribute to the team more by activating greater responses from his peers. This meant greater progress toward achieving their life-changing objective. Today, the team has come to life, demonstrating a greater ability to put their whole heart into making the big idea a reality. Their new product has found its way to the market and is now being celebrated. The flagship study the team completed was recognized as the best research done in the industry for the year. And, in control groups, the team is seeing their dream become a reality: readmission rates of patients have been cut by one-third, they’re seeing lower rates of infections, and patients sustain their health longer.

“What’s cool,” Dr. O said, “Is that not only are we succeeding in delivering something the world needs, but we feel much better about how we’re getting the job done.” That’s making an epic impact.

How to Make the Activator Decision More Consistently

Dr. O’s transformation was, frankly, even faster than we typically experience with clients. He was deeply and intrinsically motivated to transform the big idea into a big product and channeled that energy into being a person who could effectively bring out the best in others. No surprise: When a person takes the attention off themselves and puts it on others, empathy increases and they become stronger teammates. Similar to the series of five questions we previously provided so you can model the Contributor Decision more consistently, the questions we asked Dr. O came from a place of believing that he already possessed the ability to bring out the best in others. Dr. O didn’t need to be fixed; he wasn’t broken. He simply needed to get even better at doing what he wanted to do. Here are the steps and questions we used:

1. Tell us a story of when you brought the best out of others with whom you were teamed.

a. What did it feel like to bring out their best?

b. What were you thinking when you did this?

2. What did you specifically do to bring out their best?

3. What is a situation with your teammates in the coming week where you want to bring out their best?

4. Remind us: Why is it important to you to gain greater mastery at making the Activator Decision?

5. What are the measurable actions you want to take to accomplish the objective identified in step 3? (Note: We created a list with Dr. O of all the things he knew were effective at bringing out the best in others, including asking questions, listening without adding his ideas on top of others’ wisdom, including them in decision-making, and more.)

The Activator Decision is a game changer for the teams that have team members practicing it regularly. Among other things, transactional interactions where people come together only to get business done are replaced with meaningful exchanges, where the message from teammate to teammate is clear: I value you.

The Connector Decision: A Closer Look

For six years, this team of incredibly talented people had devoted themselves to their one big thing. But results weren’t coming. A joint venture between two companies, a global consumer goods corporation and a specialty container company, was created to deliver an innovative new product to the customer. While everyone was passionate about the vision, the daily work it took to deliver on it felt like a tangled mess of interactions. The facts didn’t lie. Despite their passionate efforts, they were losing market share in their space. The vision was not becoming a reality.

It was easy to cluster the multiple teams working on this effort into three groups: (1) those who got their paycheck from the established and powerful culture of the global consumer goods company; (2) the team members who were part of the equally strong ethos of the established specialty container company; and then (3) the employees who were caught in between in a newly forming culture—an amorphous mix of the original two.

Instead of a partnership across the business to deliver a shared objective (the Connector Decision), the three groups were experiencing a collision. What made this pileup especially painful is this was not only a crash of business ideas, perspectives, and competing objectives. It went beyond that. On a daily basis, due to unhealthy conflict, they saw their whole-heart-in-it approach disintegrate as teammates became disheartened.

At the root of the struggle was the belief (and therefore, approach) that proprietary information could not be shared. Meetings were regularly held with a “what’s ours is ours and what’s yours is yours” mindset. Predictably, the absence of information drove deep distrust and breaks in communication.

“We weren’t a team,” said one person. “We were a group of teams, each representing our respective companies. Looking back, it’s a miracle we got anything done at all up to that point.”

The breakthrough came quickly. Establishing a human imperative together (the team’s unique thinking and action necessary to succeed) enabled them to recalibrate where they had established psychological boundaries.¹⁴ “The idea—the reminder, really—that everyone wants to be great changed everything for us,” said one of the R&D members. “Instead of listening to others seeking evidence on why we shouldn’t trust them, we flipped the paradigm. Now we listened with the lens of why we can trust them.”

Another added, “It seems simple, looking back at it. But that’s the moment we no longer assumed that when information wasn’t shared it wasn’t because they didn’t want to share it. It’s because they couldn’t. Basically, we stopped speculating that those people were jerks.”

Next, the team understood that in order to operate at its best, they needed to do away with the competing team identities and cultures. In its place, a singular identity and team narrative was formed that was built upon the best of both worlds. The teams became one by transcending the limits of operating as separate teams with three competing cultures. This unity brought a renewed sense of ownership.

By equipping each person to connect effectively outside originally perceived boundaries, this newly constituted team quickly impacted the business. A 400 percent improvement was made in their innovation process that revolutionized food storage and recaptured market share.

“Beyond the obvious business outcomes,” one of the leaders reflected, “I must say that it’s immensely gratifying to see members of the original team still meet with one another. Many of them share that this was the best assignment they ever had.”

Doing business together successfully requires connecting as humans effectively, and specifically beyond traditional boundaries. The Connector Decision, the choice to partner across the business, is the DBT Decision that the team must make together. A team can’t make an epic impact if only a portion of the team chooses to partner beyond those with whom they interact the most. Therefore, the Connector Decision requires the individuals of the team to first make the Contributor and Activator Decisions. When this occurs, a team improves on its ability to deliver on its responsibilities to the larger organization.

When we consider the average team and its ability to successfully and consistently make the Connector Decision, we conservatively estimate it occurs 10 to 20 percent of the time. Teams that achieve big things succeed in making this powerful decision do so at a rate that’s consistent with the earlier two decisions: over 80 percent of the time.

At what rate of success will your team need to make the Connector Decision do big things?

How to Make the Connector Decision More Consistently

As humans, we are prone to judging other groups by their worst actions, while we judge ourselves by our best intentions.¹⁵,¹⁶ This sentiment is too often a default truth for many teams within the same organization. Left unchecked, it suppresses and suffocates the company’s ability to adapt and grow. Rush to save your company’s life the next time you hear this around the workplace:

• “Just do our part, then throw it over the fence . . .”

• “Why do they keep making us do all of this extra work?”

• “We can’t let them know the details of our plan because they’ll take credit.”

This isn’t teamwork. It’s a fast approach to flatlining.

Change the arc of history in such cases by equipping your team to connect and partner beyond the perceived and psychological boundaries that surely limit their ability to do big things. Here are five key questions we used to support the joint venture team so they could more effectively partner across the business:

1. Do the actions of other teams determine your level of integrity and the behaviors necessary to deliver your business imperative?

2. Where are you already modeling a partnership approach with others? And how did you accomplish that?

3. Where in your daily business do you see an opportunity to more effectively partner across the business to deliver a shared objective?

a. Are you willing to model the thinking and behaviors of a one-team approach before the “other” team does?

4. Is it important to the members of the team that everyone gives their best and brings out the best in those who may not even be on our team (as it’s currently defined)? And if so, why?

5. What steps will we take to hold ourselves accountable to connect and partner across the business?

Michael Fullan, in his wonderful book Leadership and Sustainability: System Thinkers in Action, says, “We need a system laced with leaders who are trained to think in bigger terms and to act in ways that affect larger parts of the system as a whole.”¹⁷ We certainly agree with Fullan, and based upon our experience, encourage you to go further. Much more can be achieved not only when the leader is trained to think this way but when the entire team is equipped to partner across the business.

For any of us to act in a way that betrays another team is to betray ourselves. We must not allow uncertainty about others to translate into an uncertainty about our future. When the doubts or fears of another convince us to isolate or shun others, we isolate and diminish ourselves. Much is lost: We are left to do and achieve meaningless work. Then, we risk becoming meaningless.

By making the Connector Decision, we acknowledge the connections that already exist among us. By leveraging our contacts and interactions within our daily work, we bring more value to all involved—and more meaning to ourselves.

Do-or-Die Teamwork

The Powell expedition remains a perfect example of the DBT Framework. There is evidence in Powell’s journals that the team occasionally failed in making the 3 DBT Decisions. In other words, the members of the team didn’t bring their best, didn’t bring out the best in their teammates, and certainly couldn’t see their work in relationship to anything beyond themselves.¹⁸

For example, there’s the time when the team finally found a camp with enough trees and brush to provide a much-needed respite from the sun that had been baking them for months. Sadly, the cook, a man named Hawkins, built a fire that got out of control and sent the men running for their boats, some of them with clothes on fire. Precious supplies were lost, and trust was damaged. Powell’s journal makes it clear that grudges were held against Hawkins the remainder of the trip. Sides were taken to either defend him or regularly press charges against him. Cooperation among the men suffered.

Yet, ultimately, Powell’s team members made the 3 DBT Decisions often enough to achieve their big thing. This includes the Connector Decision, as well. While journeying through the arid western region of the United States, Powell proved he was seeing the team’s work as part of something bigger than the river.

Years after his exploring days were over, Powell served as director of the U.S. Geological Survey and routinely worked to educate the public. As a civilization, we couldn’t move west and treat the land like we did in the East; this was his message from his lessons learned during the exploration of the region around and including the Grand Canyon. The West required different thinking and actions. He and his team saw the bigger picture.

In the work most of us do, we don’t face the do-or-die consequences of our teamwork like Powell’s team did. But it can still feel like it. Each of us has heeded therapists’ advice by not “making our work our life.” Yet, we do insist on being fulfilled in whatever it is we choose to do. And often, achieving—doing important things—is what fulfills us. That’s why we commit hours away from loved ones; we sit behind desks when we should be exercising; and we feel our heart’s temptation to harden when we see others act irresponsibly. The stakes may not be death by waterfalls, but the pressure feels the same.

That’s why the 3 DBT Decisions are so important. When we make them, we get our control back. We do what matters most to us: We show that we are, in fact, good people who are capable of doing big things.