10 Is Your Team Ready to Do Big Things?
Like the Colorado and Green Rivers that John Wesley Powell and his crew were on during their exploration of the Grand Canyon—many rivers eventually find their way to bigger bodies of water. Those of us who have been to an ocean know there are very good reasons why in certain locations signs are posted warning, “Danger! No Swimming.” On the surface the water often has waves that roll in and splash noisily on the beach. The invitation to jump in for a swim and play in the surf lights up the faces of those who walk by.
But danger lurks in those inviting waters.
From the beach the water appears to be coming into shore where every swimmer ultimately wants to go. In such places, however, if you jump in the water, your life is imperiled. Hidden underneath the surface is a riptide that overpowers even the strongest swimmers: a massive current of water pulling everything in its grip out to sea. The invisible, powerful force of energy puts you in a fight for your life.
To varying degrees, every team faces this same dynamic within the organization it operates. Unsuspecting and well-intentioned team members commit to do big things and enthusiastically jump into their work. But the system around them, the most powerful of which is the company culture (“this is how we do things around here”), grabs and overwhelms them like a riptide. Just as in the ocean, even the strongest are powerless in such currents.
The well-documented riptide of wrongdoing at organizations like Enron and others (a weekly read of business news highlights several) pulled employees to places many of them didn’t want to go. All too often, in many organizations, the daily pressure to deliver business imperatives mounts a stunning force that, left unabated, engulfs people and teams.
While most of us won’t break the law, far too many of us are susceptible to demonstrating behaviors that betray our better nature. Complacency, apathy, or even disdain for our fellow man become norms as the riptide pulls us away from our ability to practice our values. The promise of our potential is spoiled. This is epic in its most tragic form.
In these cases, the Do Big Things Framework becomes a lifesaver.
Stop Trying to Be a High-Performing Team
What does it mean if being on a high-performing team requires driving home at night questioning who you’re becoming as a person? And wondering if your family will recognize you when you get home?
If this is the case, stop trying to be a high-performing team. We know doing so sounds like an act of heresy, yet consider the following scenario. Imagine you are swimming in that inviting ocean we just described and you find yourself caught in a vicious riptide. As you’re being pulled out to sea, away from your objective (the shore), bystanders on the beach shout, “Swim harder! Swim harder!” So you do. But rather than making progress toward safety, you only feel yourself being pulled farther away from what’s important to you.
As your muscles lose their strength, the fatigue feels like an anchor. You wonder if you will survive.
Within many organizations, well-intentioned trainings are launched for the purposes of developing high-performing teams. The basics of swimming are covered: Establish the team’s purpose, set and align to objectives, determine strategies, ensure role clarity and methods of accountability. And always remember to communicate and trust your teammates. These basics are critical to the success of your team. They’ve been covered and reviewed in a plethora of resources, including the now classic work by Katzenbach and Smith in their 2005 Harvard Business Review article, “The Discipline of Teams.”1 Yet, what was needed for teams to succeed 10 years ago (heck, even five years ago), is not enough for teams to break free from stronger and different currents today.
In short, in many ways the term “high-performing teams” has become merely a cliché, a term meant to market or identify standard practices. Add to this the fact that participants in such trainings too infrequently return to do business as usual, and it’s easy to understand why the term is beginning to fall out of favor.
Our study of the resources on the topic of high-performing teams that are being consumed by the majority of organizations shows a glaring omission. The ability for the team to deliver on its commitment to the human imperative is conspicuously absent. While the quality of the content is strong, it too often only appeals to the intellect. In other words, it activates only the brain. Changing behaviors, however, is not an intellectual exercise. It’s the business of the heart.
When a team leaves a high-performing team training program that fails to include steps and tools to deliver the human imperative, it doesn’t take long for them to discover they’re not fully equipped to do big things. Thrown into the ocean of the real world, they’re now exposed to an invisible undercurrent comprised of human emotions demonstrated in the countless interactions among team members and with those outside the team. Left unable to effect change in those areas, the members of the team swim harder, thinking that more effort is the answer.
To their horror, though, the team members look up and realize they’re not making progress. In fact, it feels like they’re getting pulled backward. So they call a team meeting and go over the team’s purpose, objectives, plans, roles, measurements, and so forth, with the good intentions gaining the breakthrough they need.
But nothing is strong enough to counter the cultural riptide under the surface of all those spreadsheets and flipchart papers filled with numbers. The team needs more. They need to be equipped to deliver the human imperative.
The day most of us have been talking about for the past few years has arrived. By itself, business performance no longer defines success nor fulfillment. We all want more. We want to deliver big results and enjoy the process of doing so. We want to be productive technically and contribute as human beings. We want to succeed as a team in business and be fulfilled in life. Doing both is how we define what it means to make an epic impact. It means we do more because we are more, certainly as individuals, and all the more so as a team.
If you’re caught in a riptide, to save yourself you must do what seems counterintuitive. The lifeguard will coach you not to swim toward the beach. Instead, they will tell you to swim parallel to the beach, so you can swim out of the harmful current.2 Then, once you’ve cleared the opposing energy and created the conditions to be more effective as a swimmer, you begin to angle toward the beach.
To succeed as a team, you must go beyond the traditional definitions of high-performing teams by first swimming parallel to the shore—in other words, creating the human conditions needed to succeed. This is precisely why the DBT Framework equips teams to prevail. It makes sure the water is safe for everyone to be their best by maximizing the efforts of all.
As you effectively take the practical steps of the DBT Framework, here’s what you can expect to see as your team goes beyond high performance.
Your Assessment: The Team Heart Quotient
You can effectively predict how well prepared your team is to do big things by measuring the level of technical and aligned capabilities the team possesses in proportion to how much the team’s whole heart is in the matter at hand. The device to do this is the Team Heart Quotient (THQ), depicted in Figure 10.1, which measures essential elements that contribute to teams that Do Big Things as compared with teams that have only heart, or only high capability—or teams that lack either one.
At this moment, your team is one of four types of teams—(1) DBT, (2) High-Performing, (3) Heart Attack, and (4) Despondent—as depicted in Figures 10.2 through 10.5.
1. Do Big Things (DBT) Teams: Capable of sustained, robust, and regularly improving results. Team members are aligned with strong technical skills, and they have the ability to put into practice essential whole-heart behaviors, including emotional courage, empathy, and a one-team approach. Simply, they care about one another while being very good at what they do in their jobs. The members of such teams may drive home physically tired, yet they’re internally energized.
Is Your Team Ready to Do Big Things?
Figure 10.1 The Team Heart Quotient
Figure 10.2 Do Big Things Teams
Figure 10.3 High-Performing Teams
Figure 10.4 Heart Attack Teams
Figure 10.5 Despondent Teams
2. High-Performing Teams: Capable of short bursts of high performance. The team has top talent that is aligned, yet team members too infrequently have their hearts and minds mobilized. Consequently, the team is at a high risk of being overwhelmed by negative human behaviors in the working environment. Because team members are increasingly fatigued, pessimistic, and disillusioned, these teams have difficulty adapting to new requirements and suffer from dwindling capacity to get big jobs done. The members of these teams are at the highest risk of not being recognized by family members upon arriving home and asking the question, “What’s it all for?”
3. Heart Attack Teams: Capable of small spurts in results. Such teams possess a lack of skill or aligned talent, yet they demonstrate huge amounts of heroic courage, passion, and commitment. These teams work extraordinarily hard because of their big hearts, but because they lack aligned technical capabilities the heavy lifting only leads to little progress, quick burnout, and turnover. The members of this team drive home with the chronic pain of disappointment.
4. Despondent Teams: Capable of only mediocre outcomes, at best. This team lacks skill or the talent they do have is not aligned, and they are generally disheartened. Team members often conceal reality by focusing only on what they will do someday with little attention to how they will effectively improve. Their busy schedules give the illusion they are making progress. Yet, they lack a vision or a process for success. (Note: It’s not uncommon for despondent teams to have team members with top talent or passion join them. Soon, however, these new people only want one thing from the team and that is to be off the team.)
The THQ assessment equips teams to measure the current state for your team and builds the awareness necessary for your team to take constructive steps forward. As a gift to our readers, you can take your free short THQ assessment at www.VerusGlobal.com/DoBigThings.
Once your team has assessed where it stands with regard to THQ, it’s important to take the next step of improving. And to be sure, no matter where your team is on the THQ assessment, you can improve—and do so quickly. Use these five strength-based questions as a recipe to facilitate a transformative discussion so your team can evolve toward being a stronger DBT team:
1. Considering our current state as a team, what strengths do we possess that are necessary to become a DBT team?
2. How have we achieved the progress we’ve made in developing our team? (Study successes so they can be leveraged.)
3. Which specific step of the DBT Framework must we better apply to become more effective as a team and make an epic impact?
4. In what ways will developing our strength in the DBT Framework better equip us to do the big things in front of us? (Motivations must never be assumed.)
5. How will we achieve the objective outlined in question three and measure our progress? (Hint: Gaining mastery in the tools outlined in each step of the DBT Framework, such as the 3 Mind Factors and the Energy Map, are critical to include in your plan.)
The most effective way to change behaviors of any team is not by training the team about targeted values, but by equipping teams to use their values to deliver on the human imperative. The difference between these two approaches is subtle; teams that regularly do big things understand that difference.
The DBT Framework, Beginning to End: How a Team Went from Worst to First
As we near the close of Do Big Things and you advance your team’s ability to make an epic impact, let’s look at the DBT Framework in its entirety (Figure 10.6). To do so, we’ll share another example of how one of our clients used the Framework. As you read their story, if your instincts tell you your team can do big things, too—trust your instincts. They’re right.
Things were bad for this North American commercial team. When considering all the regions of the global medical device company, their performance was the poorest. Then, just before we began equipping them to do big things, worse news came, and the Grand Canyon they had to pass through got even deeper and more treacherous. The company’s number-one product, positioned to compete with the top device of the leading competitor in their space, was recalled. The vision of closing the gap of 22 share points between them and the leader in the market now seemed insurmountable.
Figure 10.6 The DBT Framework
Figure 10.7 Despondent Teams in the THQ Assessment Matrix
Was flatlining imminent? Under such pressure, would a riptide of wrongdoing form and sweep this despondent team up in a current they couldn’t overcome as a team?
“Morale was low. Results were poor. We felt like we were dragging the entire company down,” said Jay, the vice president of sales. He’s the sort of person who is built for authenticity. When Jay speaks, you can feel his words because he cares both about people and business success. As we heard him speak, that’s when we knew that despite their severe challenges, this team would prevail, as long as they used a process for success.
Teams that do big things are neither distracted nor daunted by the size of the task in front of them. Rather, they stay focused on the plan to deliver their business imperative and the size of the heart within the team. High expectations by the business translate into high expectations as humans.
This commercial team, made up of Jay’s salesforce, and his peers on the marketing team, and with supporting functions like HR and finance, had a sound business plan to get back to growing the business. Because plans are only as good as the team that will execute them, they only needed to answer this question: How do we operate in a way so we can quickly deliver the big thing that needs to get done? They used the DBT Framework as their solution.
There would be no flatlining for this team. We interviewed several members to learn their story. Here’s a focused examination of key ways they applied the seven steps of the DBT Framework.
Step 1: Commit to the Human Imperative
“We knew we needed to take a stand as a team,” a sales director named Ken told us. “Our plan was bold: Coming out of the product recall, we decided to no longer bring a device to market that consumers were asking for. Instead, we would go to market with a new device. On the surface our plan looked suicidal. But we’d done our research, and the data showed us that we could change the market by bringing the doctors a product that was better for their patients.”
Being bold means breaking the limits of traditional thinking or actions. No one at corporate headquarters would have blamed the team for continuing to play in their space the same way their competitors were. But that isn’t how big things are achieved.
“We got all-in,” Ken said when describing the human imperative. “And not just for the plan, but for each other. No one straddled the fence. Everyone on the team committed their heart and soul because we felt that what we were doing mattered in our industry.”
Jay added, “I’ve always believed that connecting people’s emotional involvement and their intellectual drive is the key to unlocking success. People don’t want to come to work and be average.”
If a company is going to ask employees to be all-in, it works far better when employees know the company is all-in for them, too. “So we invested in developing the whole person within each team member,” Jay said. “We made sure that the tools we equipped them with to be successful at work would also enable them to be more successful people, even at home. The Energy Map does that.”
Committing to the human imperative by combining the emotional with the intellectual “is an additive,” Jay told us. “It’s a multiplier.”
Step 2: Embody Success
Is your team losing? Or is the team a loser? Teams that do big things may compare themselves to the competition and realize they are losing. They never, however, define themselves as losers. Ken made sure of this. Early on, he and others on the team created experiences for the team that drove insights into what it looked and felt like to succeed.
“We showed a chart of the current state for our industry, in terms of what products customers were purchasing,” Ken said. “Then we showed the next chart that had the product we were bringing to market listed as highest in volume sold across the industry. We said, ‘When the market looks like this in the future, it will mean we’ll have delivered on our plan, and we’ll win.’”
As the plan began to work, the team seized the evidence. “When we took an account from our competitor in their own backyard, we celebrated in big ways. Then we all agreed: If we can do this there, we can do it anywhere,” Ken said. “It was truly a symbolic moment because the team really began to believe.”
Moving from thinking about how to be a success to knowing what it feels like to be successful is a team’s transformative step to making an epic impact.
Step 3: Choose to Contribute, Activate, and Connect Across the Business
Imagine for a moment that you’re a salesperson. You work out of your home a thousand miles away from headquarters. Suddenly, through rumors and leaked information, you’re informed: The company is no longer going to give you a product to sell that most customers want.
This is a salesperson’s nightmare, one that causes a lot of teams to flatline. Sales team members have made plans. Lives have been established that are contingent on bonuses earned for achieving those plans. How can someone be “all-in” when the rules keep changing?
But this isn’t how it’s done on teams that do big things. “We knew we had to successfully connect with the people in the field if we were going to succeed,” Jay’s colleague, Rhea, told us. As the lead HR person on the team, she focused on making sure every step the team took activated the best in others and people felt connected across the business.
Far too many organizations default into thinking that sharing information across the business means people are connecting across the enterprise. Not so. Information only satisfies the intellect; to connect is to deliver the experience of caring, which includes ensuring everyone understands the “why” and “how” of decisions made.
“We were all-in,” said Rhea. “We’ve got a tremendous passion to improve the lives of those we serve.” Face-to-face meetings, personal phone calls, and other interactions were no longer simply exchanges of information to get a job done. Now, such moments were used to develop cross-functional relationships and establish a common language and shared vision. Each interaction among team members was targeted as an opportunity to bring the best out of others. The impact was immediate.
“Once people realize they have the capacity to activate others, every interaction changes,” Rhea told us. “And that awareness doesn’t go away. You can choose to ignore it, but that’s tough to do when everyone around you is modeling it.”
Step 4: Exercise Your Barrier-Breaking Authority
“Our mantra on the team became, ‘Control what you can control,’” Marcus, an executive sales director on the team, told us. Rather than spending time discussing the merit of the decisions executive leadership were making, he said, “We had to focus on those things that we could truly influence.” The 3 Mind Factors, always turned on, now were being put to greater use.
A team can only do big things when the individuals on the team own their response to their circumstances. When enough people on the team exercise their natural authority to respond in a healthy and productive way to issues and events that occur, greater change can occur.
A key moment for this medical device commercial team occurred early at a company conference. Standing on the stage, Ken asked everyone to write 70 on a piece of paper. Then he told them, “That’s the percentage of our customers who say that out of all the companies in our industry, they trust us the most.”
Next, they were asked to turn the paper over and write 30 on the other side. Ken then told the team, “That’s the percentage of market share we possess.”
The room was silent. “You could have heard a pin drop,” Ken reported to us. “You could feel the fact that everyone knew this gap wasn’t right. Very honestly, we told them, ‘We’re number one in our customers’ eyes, but number two in the market,’” Ken said. “We didn’t have to tell them that wasn’t right. They already knew that. All we had to say was, ‘You are empowered to change this.’”
Step 5: Focus on What Matters
It’s impossible for a team to effectively focus its energy on executing a plan when team members are distracted by poor or ineffective relationships with one another. “If we’re not working together, we’re not working,” Rhea said, laughing at the common sense.
Several team members had been in the organization for more than a decade. Unfortunately, some of them had reputations that weren’t in service to the team’s goals; instead, these people were the flag bearers for cliques that had formed over time. The Doofus Principle (when people choose to focus on and collect evidence that is destructive to people, partnership, and performance) was pervasive. Groups of people under separate banners were focused on what they didn’t like about each other, which meant discussions were rarely focused on the business imperative. Instead, priceless time was spent discussing why “those people” were wrong.
All of this changed for the better when those who were carrying the flags were equipped with the 3 Mind Factors. Together, they looked at each other and said: This isn’t working. This isn’t who we want to be.
Within days the flag bearers of cliques proved what brain researchers say is true. As they began to focus on and talk about what they did appreciate and respect about one another, a transformation occurred: They saw each other differently. Trust expanded, and they delivered on their commitment to the human imperative.
“No longer were discussions about ‘gotcha,’ where people were trying to catch others doing things wrong,” Rhea told us. “People began to actively see people fight for the right things, instead of fighting each other. The speed with which we could tackle tough issues immediately improved because of the relationships we were building with each other. Now we could talk honestly about how we were getting the results we were getting.”
It’s impossible for a team to adapt to changing circumstances or a new plan when team members are locked in old or destructive relationships with one another. If you want your team to have an epic focus, you increase your odds by equipping team members to have epic relationships.
Step 6: Energize Around a Shared Reality
Bold plans are often not executed because they involve extraordinary risk. Had this commercial team correctly interpreted the data? Would the doctors and patients truly respond to the new device as they expected? And what if the competition beat them to market with a more innovative product?
While those questions reveal the risks the team was taking, the greatest danger for any plan (bold or not) is having a team that halfheartedly executes the plan. As this team wrote their success story, the Energy Map proved vital in enabling the team to function in a shared reality that elevated the whole heart within the team.
“Our general manager could see it clearly,” Marcus said. “The reality of the situation was that our culture was going to have to get stronger if we were going to get through this.” To ensure they could better make the Connector Decision and see the needs of the entire enterprise, “We put a time line up on the wall of everything that had happened to the company up until that point,” Marcus said.
The Energy Map was then used naturally to process their focus and emotions so the team could prepare itself to move forward. “After telling a bunch of stories about what used to be, we finally stepped back, looked at the entire time line. And then we said, ‘Good or bad, the past is the past. We have to focus forward from now on,’” Marcus told us.
“I truly believe that was the turning point for the team,” he said. “By that I don’t mean things suddenly became easy, either. We just had the same frame of mind and more energy to do the job we knew we needed to do.”
Step 7: Mobilize Hearts and Minds Forward
“I had a dream team,” Roberto said. As a regional sales manager, he and his team were on the front lines, engaging directly with the customer. “We’d worked incredibly hard to get to where we were. Everyone was talented and dedicated. And then,” he paused as he told us the story, “when they introduced the new business plan, they realigned the regions. Overnight, we had a 65 percent disruption to the sales force. Now, most of the people on our regional team were people I didn’t hire, nor even knew well.”
Disruptions often mean that the path the team used to see as the direction forward no longer exists. Things get messy, and results can suffer as a consequence. “It wasn’t a surprise to me that in the early stages of delivering the plan, our regional team ranked twentieth out of 24 teams in sales,” Roberto told us.
Don’t feel sorry for Roberto or his team, though. Regardless of the challenge, they always prove they can adapt—because they have a proven process to ensure the team operates in way to succeed at whatever challenge they’re thrown. Observing Roberto and the team meant seeing each step of the DBT Framework modeled impeccably.
“The key was keeping the new team focused on executing a simple plan,” Roberto said. “We concentrated on training ourselves on the new device, executing a plan to educate our customers, and then regularly tapping into the natural energy we all have to get the job done.”
Roberto is wise. He knew the team would need to address more than the typical boilerplate questions. As well, it wouldn’t be enough if he was the only one asking Questions that Trigger the Hearts and Minds of the team. To do this big thing in front of them, he needed the entire team equipped with the ability to use effective questions. “So we made the conscious and strategic decision to slow down so we could speed up by developing everyone’s skill to use questions,” he said. Here’s a sample of those they used:
• What mindsets, capabilities, and skills do we absolutely have to have right now to overcome our challenges and deliver our objective?
• How must we shape the narrative on this challenge?
• How can we immediately strengthen our focus and execution to ensure we achieve our goal?
• Given the challenge we just got hit with, how high do you believe we can bounce as a result? And why?
• How will this challenge and our success make us stronger and better as a team?
• How do we strengthen the inner core of our team to get this job done?
You’re right if you think that these questions aren’t typical in most workplaces. This is why so few teams do big things: Hearts and minds are mobilized forward too infrequently. The questions Roberto’s team used were strategic Class III through V questions. Like those listed, they elevate consciousness by tapping into motivation, vision, and purpose.
“Anyone who joins our team quickly learns we’re not trying to be just another high-performing team,” Roberto said. “We’re going to push the performance boundaries and establish new benchmarks of success.
“The right questions asked at the right time light up the soul and spirit of people at a deep and primal level. And that’s the only part of each of us that brings forth a superhuman strength,” Roberto told us. “No team can do anything significant without a laser focus and a compelling reason to achieve. And forward focus questions achieve that.”
By executing their plan with mobilized hearts and minds, in 18 months Roberto’s region had an epic impact on the company’s success story. “We became the second fastest growing region in the country,” he reported. “To see members of the team recognized for their contributions was exciting. Winning as a team, though, and knowing how close we all became as a team creates powerful memories that will last a lifetime.”
The Epic Impact
Teams that do big things deliver high performance and as they do so the members of the team become better people and stronger together. Over the next five years, this medical device commercial team closed a 22–point gap in market share between them and their top competitor. They did their big thing: They went through their Grand Canyon and became the market leader.
Figure 10.8 Teams that Do Big Things in the THQ Assessment Matrix
Visiting with Ken afterward, as he reflected on the success of the team, he said, “We stayed focused on the big things that would have the greatest impact. As a result, we changed the way the game was played in our industry. Who gets a chance to say that? It’s an incredible feeling.”
When Ken, Jay, Rhea, Marcus, and other members of this team interact with one another, there’s a striking camaraderie that continues to this day. Trust, laughter, and lots of listening are apparent. As well, immediately noticeable are two things they don’t do. They don’t talk about themselves. And no single person acts as if they are bigger than the team. As a result, you find yourself wishing you could spend more time with them. Forward-focused energy is always infectious.
The rewards for the team were many, including Country of the Year honors bestowed in consecutive years by the parent company. But for this team, there is more to their epic results than the plaques they can put on their wall.
“More importantly,” Jay said, “our doctors, the people we serve, are enjoying seeing their businesses grow because of the greater focus we’re putting on them.”
Then, Jay paused, thought for a moment, and finished: “I’m proud of the business results. But I’m most proud of people coming up and saying thank you for investing in me professionally and personally. I’m a better person, even at home.”
The Only Reason Big Things Are Achieved
At noon, on August 29, 1869, 99 days after their epic journey began, Powell’s band of explorers emerged from the Grand Canyon. The emotions were intense as the men brought their boats to their final landing. “The relief from danger and the joy of success are great,” Powell wrote in his journal. “Our joy is almost ecstasy.”3
As a crew that had accomplished what seemed impossible, no one should be surprised by what the men discussed around the campfire their first night removed from the canyon. While they talked about what they had just done, about home, and their scant supplies, what was discussed most centered around relationships among team members, including those who were no longer with them. “We sit till long after midnight . . . talking chiefly of the three men who left us,”4 Powell noted.
One of the crew members, George Bradley, added in his journal, “All we regret now is that the three boys who took to the mountains are not here to share our joy and triumph.”5
They cared. They knew they were better together. And it showed.
Should Major Powell, as the leader of the expedition, be given the credit for creating this dynamic? In fact, was the entire success of the expedition a result of Powell’s leadership? In an age that glorifies individuals, especially those in the position of leadership, it’s tempting to heap praise on the expedition’s commander. Doing so, however, would be to deny certain facts.
The journals of those people who accompanied Powell, as well as the history books written by those who have made it their purpose to study Powell and the expedition, make it clear that the man had his foibles and deficiencies.6 For all his visionary work, optimism, and bravery, he was also noncommunicative, demanding, distant, and, many say, self-centered.
This, then, reinforces the power of the DBT Framework: Powell would have been forgotten (perhaps even killed) if it hadn’t been for a team, a group of individuals coming together to do something more significant than any one of them alone. Indeed, the team is the only reason the big thing was achieved.
This means that for a team to succeed, leaders do not need to be superhuman. Nor do the members of a team need to qualify as exclusive specimens of humanity.
Historian Donald Worster, in his book, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell, summarized this point perfectly. What Major Powell’s crew represented was:
. . . a triumph of ordinary people confronting an extraordinary landscape.
The Major and his men, with few exceptions, successfully answered the old challenge . . . could people of no particular status or breeding or elite education, through diligence and ambition, achieve something special? They could and they did.7
People being at their best, bringing out the best in others, and partnering across the business to deliver shared objectives—this is how teams do big things. This is how you make an epic impact.
Your team is ready for its Grand Canyon.
