Why Are Some Teams Successful?

 



See Beyond the Horizon

Anyone who knows me understands I love sports and use a lot of sports analogies when I am trying to make points related to improvement.  This story is one of my favorites.

A few years back,  I was listening to a former coach and he was talking about the pre-game locker room speech he would give his players. During this speech, he talked about how his players, coaches and fans want to win. But he said the other team's players coaches and fans also want to win. Heck, everyone wants to win. So what will create the difference between winning and losing?

The difference between winning teams and losing teams is that winning teams expect to win. By expecting to win, their team is willing to perform the necessary acts to prepare themselves to win, then leverage their winning preparation during the game in a way so that they refuse to lose.

When I am working with managers during improvement exercises, the difference between success and failure is sometimes the successful manager simply refuses to be unsuccessful. They expect to win.

I had the pleasure, of working with an inpatient unit in a large, urban, teaching hospital. On this unit, the entire team manages visually, and the entire team follows the standard work. The results of this environment is a continuously improving team that has fundamentally changed all of their key measures and has separated themselves in performance and culture from their sister units within the hospital and from other hospitals across their region.

The manager simply refuses to fail and this attitude has a created a culture, where their entire team expects to win. With this culture comes a disciplined apporach to preparing for, implementing, and sustaining improvement. The patients and their families are the recipients of this approach.

So when you embark on your improvement journey, remember that everyone wants results. But, the great teams expect results and are willing to put in the hard work of preparing for success and doing what is necessary not to fail.

Lean Blessings;

Ron Bercaw

President, Breakthrough Horizons Ltd

www.breakthroughhorizons.com


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