The Excitement Progam!...educate, motivate, appreciate daily

The business is about to launch...really it is!

I apologize to everyone. It will happen this year. Trust me!

Look at the date (12/13/08) of the post below this one...

A new business, and especially one that brings any form of change to an organization, requires credibility to be seriously considered by a potential client.

The previous post is evidence that I knew what is currently happening to the Washington football program and culture would happen. From a 0-12 in 2009 team to scaring LSU, upsetting USC, and almost beating Notre Dame in South Bend in less than a year say volumes about team leadership and the team achievement system.

A similar team leader with a similar model and system took the Seattle Mariners from a 101 loss season in 2008 to a team a unique "belief system" and truly remarkable team chemistry that assured the team would focus on winning every game they played. All 162 of them. No one, not one person in associated with MLB had ever seen anything like it.

Goal: "Best of the Best" purpose, pride, passion, principles, practices, performance, and (in business ) profits

Model: "Best of the Best" team support, team leadership, talent, training, teamwork, team chemistry.

System: "Best of the Best" motivation, mind-sets, methods, meetings, missions, and movement.

Wakamatsu and Sarkisian. Truly extraordinary team leaders with truly extraordinary team achievement systems to analyze and compare to my system on this blog. Wow! How fortunate I am!                    

Steve Sarkisian "Best of the Best" passion, fun, energy

In the past week, the University of Washington football fan base has gone from the depths of unfathomable mediocrity to a week of "buzz" about the program no one in the region could have anticipated. The community has gone from watching a team that lost every game, having the worst record since it began playing football, and posting the worst record in the history of it's conference (Pac-10) to believing it has an exciting future.

In his article, No shortage of ideas from Sarkisian, in the News Tribune, Don Ruiz covers some of the desires and beliefs of the new coach.

His goal is to win games, qualify for bowls and win championships.

“It’s about time for us to get back to the Rose Bowl. It’s about time for us to get back competing for conference championships; it’s about time for us to get back competing for national championships, and that’s what our goal is.”

The goal is the "Best of the Best."  Many football coaches claim the same desire, as do many business team leaders, but few actually accomplish their goal. They don't have a system for creating an entire team of people as passionate as they are about winning.

“There are some guys that will join on board here very quickly. … We’re shooting to get the best coaching staff in America assembled here, and I don’t want to settle just to put a staff together as quickly as possible.”

The best in America! Why not? They a huge part of a successful team. Building an exceptional team of assistant coaches in college football is key to a high-performance team. As important as Assistant Store Managers are to training, motivating, leading, and retaining a great team of frontline achievers. Don't settle for anything less than the best of the best in people performance or Store performance.

“Whatever has gone on before I wasn’t here, we’re starting off on a brand new foot, with me, with the program. I think, for a lot of guys, it’s a chance for a new beginning. … We’re going to do this thing together, we’re going to compete together, we’re going to battle together and we’re going to become a football team together. And we’re going to have fun doing it.”

This is what it is all about. Team chemistry, total engagement of all personnel, and having a lot of fun. This is the essence  of the Pete Carroll system, the Steve Sarkisian System, the Dave Sovde System, and the OneByOne Team Achievement System.

Coach Sarkisian: "passion, emotion, and fun."

The new University of Washington football Head Coach, Steve Sarkisian, is going to bring an energy and passion to the team that will be way beyond what most fans expect. While he has no experience as a Head Coach, he has lots of experience as a winner on the gridiron.  

Molly Yanity states it well in her Husky Football Blog.

"My initial impressions? Exactly what this program needs. I don't know how things will translate on the field, but the Huskies need a shot of adrenaline, a dose of toughness -- both mental and physical.

He told the gathering of fans, alumni, staff and media that his practices will be open, and that he demands -- along with hard work and dedication -- passion, emotion and fun."

Energy, emotion, passion, and fun.

The same ingredients required to create a great sales and service team. He  is bringing a history of enthusiastic leadership and a passion for both winning and developing young men.

He has had exceptional mentors prior to his time with USC, but being a part of the Pete Carroll system has been an extraordinary opportunity to learn from the best.

His hire couldn't have come at a better time  for  Dave Sovde and the launch of OneByOne Team Achievement. Of the many coaches II could use to discuss the similarities of sales, service, and sports teams, Pete Carroll was at the top of my list. He has been replaced by his protege, "Sark," in the past week. Oh happy day!

The goal is an entire team of happy top achievers...

In consumer sales and service, just as it is in sports, the goal of every organization is an entire front line team of achievers. Every major league baseball team is currently  assembling a team that has the potential to be the the best of the and bring the World Series Trophy to their city. Through recruiting (trades, the annual draft), attracting (free agents), or developing (minor leagues) they build teams focused on daily success.

In sales and service, it is no different. The team with the best front line team usually wins the sales or service game. The skills, of course, are different as athletic skills are replaced with people and persuasion skills. But the goal of creating an entire team of winners is the same.

The biggest difference, however, is that in sports creating an entire team of top talent happens much more often than it does in consumer sales and service. The problem is that, while having such an extraordinary team should be the goal of any sales or service organization, it seldom is. Leadership doesn't even bother to try to create one because they think it would be a failed project. They are certain it can't be done. 

I have done it several times. It is surprisingly easy because it is more about creating a partnership culture than an entire team of top performers. A culture that focuses on employee input and involvement has no problem coming up with the strategy required to execute the creation of such an extraordinary team.

Just imagine the size of the customer base, or the customer base of any sales or service organization, if the sales environment in every store had the contagious energy of an entire sales or service team with:

• Exceptional personalities
• Extraordinary team skills
• Extra-effort work habits
• Excellent sales and service skills

It would be a customer experience guaranteed to inspire customers to remember, return, and recommend.

Trizle: "How Being Technologically Advanced Sucks"

Today's "command" from Trizle entitled "How Being Technologically-Advanced Sucks" was an exciting way to begin my day. As an old guy who remembers when businesses were successful (they really were capable of succeeding, no kidding, really) before technology.

The most expensive crime against the success of a team (organization) is in the millions spent on various forms of the belief (snake oil) that you have to measure performance in order to manage it. Thousands of managers across the world see every member of their team every day, but they need to wait for a spreadsheet of their performance to help them lead them.

But I digress from todays instructions. (I love these people. Open their link and sign up. Check out the articles on the left sidebar.) Through the years what us grey beards refer to as "bells and whistles" has become whirlpool of unneeded expense that sucks a business dry of money, man (women) power, and momentum.

As they so eloquently point out in their post, your intentions (Best of the Best) are excellent, but there are better ways to use your resources.

1. You pride yourself on the latest-and-greatest.
2. You keep your products technically-superior to everyone out there.
3. You pour chunks into your R&D.

Three weeks later, your stuff becomes obsolete.

So what do you do to keep yourself on top?

1. You expend more resources.
2. You expend more people-hours.
3. You expend more $$$.

The next thing you know:

• You're running out-of-cash.
• Your team is getting psychologically burnt.
• Your resources in sales = BOO.
• You impede @#$% momentum.

Circuit City: What was leadership thinking?

Circuit City files for bankruptcy protection

"Circuit City, which has had only one profitable quarter in the past year, has faced significant declines in traffic and heightened competition from rival Best Buy Co. and others. The company laid off about 3,400 retail employees last year and replaced them with lower-paid workers, a move analysts said could backfire, hurting morale and driving away customers."

When they laid off their experienced sales force last year, analysts weren't the only people to question the decision. Anyone with any experience is commission sales management knew that was probably a mistake. But they were already doing so poorly with their sales people, so they figured there wouldn't be much of a drop off. And they would save all that labor cost.

I'll be getting in touch with them (now that they have that John Kotter "sense of urgency"), but it's unlikely they'll take me seriously. The same ignorance that prevented them from knowing how to create, motivate, lead, and retain high-performance teams sales teams will prevent them from have the awareness required to build a company focused on being among the "Best of the Best."

This is a perfect example of the type of company I'd love to help. They need "Best of the Best" purpose, pride, passion, and productivity. They need (see above) team (company, store) achievement motivation, mind-sets, methods, meetings, missions, and a movement.

"Circuit City is a well-known brand and could re-emerge from bankruptcy, Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst David Schick said in a note to investors. "We believe the marketplace has a slot for a higher-end chain with a commissioned sales force," he said."

Not without a leadership system that educates, motivates, and appreciates daily.

Workplace Coach: Leaders can make change easier

Maureen Moriarity's articles provide exceptional insight every week, but this column should cause every struggling team leader (owner, leader, manager) reason to analyze their skills. Especially those in retail, hospitality, food service, or any business offering products or services to customers eyeball-to-eyeball.

Workplace Coach: Leaders can make change easier

"Harvard change management guru John Kotter has just released a timely book, "A Sense of Urgency." He equates leading successful change with the ability to establish a sense of urgency with employees. As a coach I know by experience that behavior change doesn't happen easily.

Most humans resist change unless they have a compelling reason to change, or put another way, until the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of changing. Leaders who establish urgency around workplace changes provide an incentive for people to act now versus acting when it's convenient or "when I can get to it." In this economy, embracing and acting on this urgency may well define the difference between success and failure.

The words, "in this economy" should be a leader/manager mind-set that motivates them to look at every part of their organization in order to  "do things right." The problem however, as John Kotter points out, is that many businesses, leaders, or managers only change when results are so mediocre that they absolutely must do something.

And then it's too late

Circuit City files for bankruptcy protection

Changes should have been made earlier, but ignorant leadership and management didn't know how.  It could be the result of laziness or stupidity, but most often it is simply a matter of not knowing what should be done, when to do it, and how to execute.

They don't have efficient leadership, management, engagement, communication, education, and motivation systems. 

Workplace Coach: Leaders can make change easier

My partner and I are finally ready to get our business going full steam. The days of "going to" are behind us, so I have been trying to come up with a way to explain what the OneByOne Team Achievement "simple, fun, and everyone" team leadership/management system can do for a leader, manager, or business in today's challenging economy.

 So when I read the first sentence in Maureen Moriarty's weekly column in Monday's P-I, I was a real happy camper.The article is speaks to solving problems with solutions that should already be a part of an effective leadership/management system. 

Workplace Coach: Leaders can make change easier

THE CURRENT ECONOMY has created an unprecedented need for companies to adapt and change. From the big automotive companies to Wall Street to small Main Street businesses, this is no time for "business as usual."

To succeed, companies big or small will need leaders who can support and manage the necessary change successfully. Resilient teams get through tough times because they have leaders who are effective in getting their teams off the dime with focus, creativity, commitment and alignment (everyone rowing in the same direction), and actively engaged in problem solving and "making it happen."

We have a management system that gets everyone to buy into the cause. And that cause is to become one of the best of the best, if not "The Best of the Best" whether you team is on the front-line, a district, a region, or the entire company.

Our problem is that our system is simple, fun, and it involves everyone. It is cheap and easy to understand. It makes change a passion that everyone buys into because they are not only changing the productivity of the team, but they are improving themselves as well.

In other words, our challenge is finding people so focused on excellence and achievement that they will take a chance on our actually being able to create high levels of productivity and an employment experience that employees remember for the rest of their lives as one of the most enjoyable and educational experiences of their lives.

In this economy, the front-line can be the difference...

It's Not About The Coffee is an interesting read. It gives great insight into how the company grew in their leadership and management practices. How they learned as they grew because of their focus on continual learning and improvement.

The author, Howard Behar, choose the same concept in The One Minute Manager that I had implemented into my team leadership system. "People who feel good about themselves produce good results" became part of the Starbucks approach to employee development and motivation. For me it evolved into, "People who feel great about themselves produce great results" because importance (self-image) to an organization drives extra-effort in employees. In most cases, it is extra-effort that separates the best of the best from the rest.

Another simple management gem from The One Minute Manager that Howard utilized in growing managers and front-line employees was "Catch people doing something right." I think that doing that daily is a key action in personnel development processes. Recognition and praise of an achievement, no matter how minor, energizes the and excites the soul.

The book is full of "people power" stories about how to create a people-centered organization. A feat many businesses claim to have accomplished, but few do. Costco, Nordstrom, Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods and J.C. Penney decades ago (when James Cash Penney was leading his "Golden Rule" company) where I, and Sam Walton, learned the people business.

Important, informed, involved, and inspired employees create a contagious, and highly profitable, energy that customers love. An exciting energy that inspires them to remember the people who served them, go out of their way to return for similar experiences, and make a point to recommend the experience to others.

What could be more beneficial to a retail business than employees who provide an experience that inspires customers to remember, return, and recommend?

Starbucks has been challenged in many ways in recent history, but their employees are seldom without the sincere smile of a happy employee who is respected, appreciated, and respected by their leaders.

Want to be extraordinary? Have an extraordinary system...

To get some inspiration about what to write here, I spent a good portion of the weekend reading about all sorts of opinions about management and leadership. Most were opinions about what should be done when leading and managing, but very little about how to do it.

Like the folks at Trizle, I see educators, professional speakers, and self-proclaimed experts who write books, speak, consult, and teach leadership and management theories based on their research, or the research of others, but not on their personal experiences or accomplishments. If they had, I would most likely have read about their "system."

It was interesting that I seldom read anything about management systems, teamwork systems, engagement systems, or systems of any kind. Since they recommend suggestions on what should be accomplished, but not how to accomplish it, these recommendations are to be implemented into the existing management systems of the readers. 

So, since much of my reading was about avoiding, solving, or eliminating personnel problems, it occurs to me that tweaking the system is not the solution for businesses and managers. Replacing the system is the solution.

I don't have all the leadership and management answers. Like everyone, I am learning every day. Nor does my management system have all the answers, but I didn't read one word that would improve my approach to team leadership. There was not one word that would change my system for creating an entire team of top performers.   

Trizoko Rocks with Management & Leadership Insights

I'm enjoying a a great day after discovering a truly unique blog. The Trizoko business journal, the blog of Trizle,"Your Business Solutions Firm" is the most interesting blog I have added to my blogroll. One of my Google Alerts generated the post, What Makes Powerful Teams?, and I opened a post and a blog that is unorthodox, unexpected, and uncommon.

The post is about the value of a team having a big-time goal. For a person who advocates business teams focusing on being the best of the best (aka the Big hairy Audacious Goals of Built to Last), I was thrilled about my discovery. The post covered many of my beliefs-

"Excitement breeds super productivity, which breeds spectacular results.

Importantly, a big-ass goal serves as the secret glue that binds a team together:

With higher stakes, a team becomes more dependent on optimizing everyone’s strengths/capabilities/experience."

but it was the tip of an extraordinary iceberg. For a business specializing in business tools, these folks have some interesting things to say, and an energizing way to say it. The Trizoko Blueprint, the blog archives, cover finance, innovation, leadership, life, management, marketing, starting a businesses, and technology.

I could have chosen many of the articles as an example of their work, but I choose this one because it covers a frequent theme on the blog. As a person who despenses advice based on personal experience, I'm enjoy reading their take on the many leadership and management "experts" who've never been in the trenches. 

From 3 Sweet Tips To Boost Team Productivity,

"Peep this: Forget everything you know about team management. Forget the books, the articles, the sweet-talking business authors who talk a good game — but never managed a day in their lives.

The Myths Debunked

Myth: “Managers must find ways to motivate people.”

Nope. People are self-motivated. You can guide them, yes; but, it’s fruitless to make decisions for them.

Myth: “The most productive teams need planning stages.”

That kills time to execute. A kick-ass productive team dozen’t worry about planning; instead, it chooses a tremendous goal, then chases it down and beats it into submission. Execution rocks.

Myth: “You need to buy our ‘bestselling-attention- whoring-top-10′ motivational books!”

Crap. Most authors base their books on theory, and on what “sounds good.” Your team would laugh.

I totally agree with the second and third myths. Theory and reality are seldom the same. But not the first "myth." A business team is just like a sports team. if  you rely on everyone being self-motivated, you will seldom reach optimum performance levels.

Lead and Manage with "Heart"

Youtube.com has an interesting video" by Dale Dauten, aka "The Corporate Curmudgeon." about "de-hiring" employees. He coined the term in his most recent book, (Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success, and it refers to managing personnel in such a way that unproductive employees leave a business without the pain, suffering, or hassle of a formal termination.

We are of like minds here,as I would hope many are, when he recommends having a one-on-one meeting with new recruits to explain what is expected of them in order for them to become great employees. And setting doable (by great employees) goals. They either blossom into exceptional employees or they fail to meet expectations and they find more suitable employment. 

He speaks to his methods as managing from the heart. That is exactly how I look at creating a great staff of employees. One by one, recruit, attract, or develop developing an entire team of achievers. No one wins when marginal employees remain on a staff. It is unfair for talented personnel to be asked to take up the slack. But is most painful and stressful for poor performers to continue to disappoint themselves and their employers.

Want to become extraordinary? Start with contests...

What is an extraordinary sales or service team?

I believe it is an entire team of happy top-flight frontline achievers. A unique and special group that is friendly, sincere, efficient, and memorable. An entire staff of frontline "performers" with exceptional attitudes, extra-effort work habits, extraordinary team skills, excellent achievement skills, and a daily commitment to maintaining great team chemistry (esprit d' corps).

A team that inspires customers to remember the experience, return for more, and make a point to enthusiastically recommend it to others.

Building this type of team is best done by developing them. You can recruit or attract achievers, but the "cool aid" tastes better and employees are more likely to become a "True Believer" when they've been motivated, educated, and appreciated since the since the day the company decided to join "The Best of the Best." That's not a problem in most companies. Top achievers are already on the team. They are waiting for the "Achievement Bar" to be raised so they can achieve exceptional success without being accused of being whatever it is the thumb suckers are calling achievers now a' days.

The best way to get people unified and focused on improvement is to have a BIG contest where the stores can compete. A contest about store excellence and team achievement. A contest to find out which team is the best in (pick a category) will drive all teams to excel in that category for the duration the contest. Then move on to the next contest in the next category. Improve, improve, improve, day after day, one by one.

Contests often drive a network of frontline teams to excel well-beyond what they would do without them. If leadership keeps it simple, makes it fun, and makes it exciting, you will learn a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of your frontline team leaders. They are the key to the Trophy Room.

Teams travel at the speed of their leaders. You are looking for team leaders who have their teams talking more about how to improve various achievement skills than who was at the party last night. Do the team leaders keep it simple and make it fun as they educate, motivate, and appreciate their teams  daily? 

Want to become extraordinary? It takes passion and belief...

The final chapter of "What Clients Love" by Harry Beckwith should be read by anyone who wants to become extraordinary. Titled, "Why do Some people and Businesses thrive?, he hits it right on the mark thanks to Historian David Landes (The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so rich and some are so poor.), John Dryden, Victor Hansen (The Soul of the Battle), David Pottruck and Terry Pearce (Clicks and Mortar) and a story about Howard Schultz and his belief that the difference between Starbucks and the rest of the coffee chains is his company's commitment and passion.

"Belief and passion: Is this any way to run a company? Give me process, a Gant chart, a system, the hardened executive insists. Give me something concrete: Seven steps, eight keys.

We try. But when we search for the hard nuggets that drive success, we don't find hard nuggets. We find something softer. We find that the equation seems elusive, defying all Intelligent efforts to reduce it to action steps."

I love Harry Beckwith. I am currently reading his latest book, You, Inc: The Art of Selling Yourself, which is as insightful as his previous three books. An excellent read, but I think what he has to say in this final chapter of "What Clients Love," is some of the most accurate, and seldom analyzed, insights he has ever published. But  he had me questioning what I was reading until I read further into the chapter.

"You could struggle for a lifetime to translate these intangibles into your plan. That's why so few companies soar. If every business could reduce belief and passion into easy steps, almost every business would have.

What should managers do? Build something that fills you with passion and then spread its flames into every corner of your business.

Listen to Pearce, Pottruck, Hanson, and Landes: Belief and passion grow businesses. Clients love passionate people and passionate businesses because passion stimulates them-they feel it and feel better too-and because they know that passion produces great work.

Triumph then, then, belongs to those who believe. belief steels us with the courage to take risks that the faithless avoid, and to reap the rewards that follow-to realize that our loves grow in proportion to our courage."

This my take on belief and passion. I think it is fairly simple to put passion and belief into an organization. They are both part of The A's, B, C's, D's, and P's of Achievement. Awareness, Attitude, Action, Belief, Courage, Confidence, Commitment, Desire, Discipline, Development, Passion, Plan, Perseverance

Like everything in life, personal and organizational excellence requires knowledge, insight, and awareness regarding whatever it is a person is trying to accomplish. It all starts with awareness. A daily focus on learning will lead to individual and organizational achievement. It is the end product of an awareness that helps people believe in their ability to excel which in turn leads to commitment  and passion.

In consumer sales and service, few businesses believe they can become extraordinary. Few have a communication (engagement) system that gets everyone on the same page, builds confidence in the company's ability to be special, or even hints at a creating a passionate team of front line personnel.

"Tasty and Terrific Tully's" is Looking Good...

Tully's Coffee is vastly improved since John Buller took over the reigns of the company. The recent shareholders meeting was somewhat optimistic (Tully's executives upbeat about the future), but Cyril Miller called the situation for what it is.

But Cyril Miller, a shareholder from West Seattle, said he was impressed with what he called a positive message from company executives.

"Now they need to find their niche and work it," Miller said.

They do need to expand their niche and, in the process, they need to separate themselves from the competition. What could be more exciting than great coffee, excellent pastries, top quality ice cream, and friendly service? They need to transform their currently, at best, ordinary customer experience  (Kenmore is the lone exception in my travels throughout the Seattle metro region) into an extraordinary "Wow!"

Consciously, and unconsciously, customers judge everything they see, hear, smell, and feel (sense) when they are in a business. Tully's Coffee needs to provide their guests with a proactive guest experience that inspires their guests to remember, return, and recommend.

A must read: "Frontline Leadership: A Cycle of Engagement"

The Change this manifesto, "Frontline leadership: A Cycle of Engagement," written by George Reavis author of Thanking Customers, is the best  analysis of engagement I have ever read.

"Traditional customer feedback practices are wrapped in programs and are delivered hierarchically from the top down. They provide feedback from colleagues and supervisors who support structure and discipline with an objective of associate involvement. But todays competitive group environments require more than passive involvement. It requires active engagement. Where engagement is defined as 'involved with heart and mind."

This statement begins the manifesto. Right on! The goal of leadership should be an entire team (company) of achievers at every job description in the company. That takes people getting involved with their hearts, minds, and souls. Passion, belief, and extraordinary achievement.

"A consistent quality found in the biographies of great entrepreneurs such ad Sam Walton, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc (McDonald's), and Thomas J. Watson (IBM). Entrepreneurs who know that engaged associated will engage customers who will in turn re-engage those same associates as well as partners. Creating a cycle of engagement."

You can add James Cash Penney to that list. He knew "engaged associates will engage customers." He was the first person to know it. Sam Walton was the second. Sam Walton worked for the J. C. Penney company for eighteen months. The time it took him to complete the acclaimed 18 month J.C. Penney Management Training Course. He quit Penney's immediately after graduating and began his own company with the J.C. Penney management program in his briefcase.

In 1970, decades after Walton took the course, I took the very same management training course. I loved the company. When I began what would be a three-year tenure, I was impressed that It was called the Golden Rule company . From day one I trusted them because how could a company focused on the Golden Rule do anything to hurt me?  It was a great ride for a lot of reasons, but learning how to get people involved in a team effort effort to create great teams was invaluable. 

He lists three primary behavior traits that lead to engagement:

      1. People demonstrate their intentions. They commit themselves.

      2. People are reflective. They continuously learn.

      3. People  pay attention. They are focused.

George Reavis is the real deal. I just stumbled across this, but has a system. Mine is similar to a degree, but the important thing is that we have the same insights and beliefs about employee engagement. We've learned different approaches to creating an engaged work force, but they are based on the same social truths. I am sincerely impressed with this manifesto, but I would add the following to the above list.

      4. People support, often with great passion, what they help create.

      5. People who feel important to the cause, produce important results.

I'm running low on ink, but I'll print this manifesto. If this is a new awareness to you, I'd recommend your printing it also. 

"Growing Great New Managers" by Erika Andersen...

As usual Change this has a couple of excellent manifestos that team leaders should be interested in reading. One of them, "Growing Great New Mangers," written by Erika Andersen, the author of the recently published and highly recommended Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers, is a great piece about how to develop great managers.

She uses gardening as a metaphor in the manifesto, just as she did in her remarkable book. Painting an accurate picture of how to go about planting and growing a bountiful crop of managers. She teaches effective leadership and management skills with a comfortable style that allows you to grasp the essence of her lessons.

I am not a gardener! We a have kind a gardening cult hero that is a part of the daily news I enjoy, but when he arrives in the telecast I can't change channels fast enough. After reading the manifesto, however, I have this urge to buy a plant as a memory of the day I read a number many of my thoughts and practices regarding team leadership, in a simple, but highly effective, manifesto about raising a garden of great managers.

You have no idea how excited I am by the growing number of people who teach leadership and management systems that are focused on motivating, developing, and retaining top achievers.

As Seth Godin says, "Why not be great?

I love Seth Godin. his books, blog, and insights. I just finished his most recent book ("The Dip" is due out May 10th), Small is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. I read it from cover to cover, over the course of a couple of weeks as he recommended. It's the first business book I have read from cover to cover in the past year. While I could write about many other riffs, the one that jumped out at me was about choosing to join the best of the best.

"You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It's never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. It takes only a moment-one second-to decide.

Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that's to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?"

It has been my experience-I have asked that question many times in my career-that, despite a wide range of responses to the question, the root of every one of them is that they choose not to be great because they don't know how to transform themselves or their organization into a focus on excellence.

They can't visualize, imagine, or even set a goal to excel because they don't know what to do next. In consumer sales and service they look at a company like Nordstrom and believe it is about everything they can't afford to do as a company. "Well, we just don't have the budget to afford a return policy like they do." When discussing Nordstrom, the extraordinary quality of their face-to-face service is what sets them apart from most other retailers. As the last paragraph of their history (on their website) states, "The company's philosophy has remained unchanged for more than 100 years since its establishment by John W. Nordstrom in 1901: offer the customer the best possible service, selection, quality and value."

I have been shopping at Nordstrom's for decades and I am yet to meet someone who wasn't focused on helping me as if i was the most important person they were going to meet that day. They recruit, attract, and develop sincere highly motivated personnel. Their leaders educate, motivate, and appreciate their staffs daily. Most of how they became great is about simple common sense.

The questions I would ask myself, my colleagues, and my staff would be: How do we become great?, Does anyone have any ideas? Has anyone been great or a part of a great organization? Does anyone know how, other than their great products, Nordstrom became great?

As Seth Godin says, "You get to make a choice." Choose to start a discussion about how you and your organization are going to be great.

In it to win it? You'll need extraordinary team chemistry...

In an interesting article, "Team chemistry and winning share symbiotic relationship," in the Seattle Times, Ted Miller (once again) tries to define team chemistry and how to create it.

"Of course, assessing team chemistry is subjective and imprecise. Some insist good chemistry is a product of winning, not the reverse. It's sort of like arguing which came first, the chicken or the egg.

So which comes first: chemistry or winning?

"Chemistry is always great on teams that are winning," former Mariners reliever Norm Charlton said. "When you're winning, the little BS things get overlooked. If you're losing, those things surface and become a problem."

But good chemistry is more than getting along. It's more than a pleasant atmosphere. There needs to be a spark. There needs to be genuine joy over playing baseball for a living. There needs to be accountability that clicks in at the first hint of complacency or self-absorption."

In sports and business, exceptional teams have great leaders with a system for acquiring (recruiting, attracting, developing) an entire team of achievers, instilling extraordinary teamwork, training their teams daily, and creating team chemistry.

Team chemistry is said to be an uncommon, elusive, and  difficult to create intangible, yet top coaches do it every year, year after year. A few years ago a head football coach who will eventually prove to be a great assistant coach, but not a great head coach, said what many not-ready-for-prime-time coaches say, "If I knew how to create team chemistry, I'd write a book about it and become a millionaire."  (I hope he is right because I'm writing a business book about creating great teams that does will cover the creation of extraordinary teamwork in depth, but it will not offer much that extraordinary sports team leaders are already doing in their team achievement systems.

Tony Donovan does it every year. Locally Mark Few at Gonzaga and Lorenzo Romar at Washington do it annually. All top echelon coaches have a disciplined firm, fair, and fun approach that focuses on the development of exceptional team chemistry. They are respected for their character and the character of their teams.  One by one, player by player, they  make certain all  players are working daily on "doing things the right way."

The formula for team achievement is simple. Leadership, talent, teamwork, training, and team chemistry. I write and speak from experience, not theory. I have created team chemistry many times.

Which comes first, chemistry or winning? Neither. In sports and in business the team leader comes first. Leadership makes it happen. Top flight team leaders do not have laissez fair management styles, they do not hope their staffs will create chemistry. They emphasize it and manufacture it, day after day, year after year, team after team.