Pygmalion

In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a sculptor who created a sculpture of a woman that was so perfect that he fell in love with it.  He prayed to the goddess Aphrodite, who in answering his prayers, brought the sculpture, Galatea, to life.  The story has inspired countless works of art and literature based on a similar theme, including (most notably - see more below), George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion and the 1956 musical, My Fair Lady, William Shakespeare's play, The Winter's Tale, Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Birth-Mark" and novella, Rappacicini's Daughter, Henry James' novel Portrait of a Lady, Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth, and the popular movies, Weird Science, Mannequin, Pretty Woman, and She's All That.

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalion in 1913 about an English gentleman and phonetics professor named Henry Higgins, who after meeting Eliza Doolittle, a poor flower seller with a strong Cockney accent in the streets of London, boasts that he can transform her into a “duchess” simply by teaching her to speak proper English.  Over the course of the next several months, Higgins trains Eliza rigorously.  While she struggles initially, she eventually masters both the arts of fine speech and etiquette to pass for a gentle lady at a high-society party.  Higgins, however, begins to treat Eliza as an object of study, rather than as a person, prompting her to eventually leave him.  

Shaw's play was turned into a Tony Award winning musical, My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle.  The musical was adapted for the big screen in 1964, again starring Harrison as Professor Higgins, but replacing Andrews with the better known (at least in film) actress Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle.  The film was a smash hit, becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 1964 (after Mary Poppins) and winning eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.  Notably, Julie Andrews won the Academy Award for Best Actress that year for the movie Mary Poppins!

In many ways, the overarching theme to all of these works of art and literature comes down to how you treat individuals.  Eliza Doolittle explained it best, "You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves but how she's treated.  I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins because he always treats me as a flower girl and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you because you always treat me as a lady and always will."

As it turns out, creating positive expectations - and, for that matter, negative ones - can actually turn into positive attitudes, positive behaviors, and positive performance.  Even if this concept was first described in ancient Greece, it wasn't scientifically "proven" until the early 1960's, when a group of psychology students at the University of North Dakota, of all places, were asked by the renowned social psychologist Robert Rosenthal to assist with an experiment involving laboratory rats.  Six of the students were told that their assigned rats ("maze-bright" rats) were bred to be smart enough to rapidly move through a maze, while the other six students were told that their rats ("maze-dull" rats) were genetically inferior and would likely have a lot of trouble moving through the maze.  Here's the catch - the rats were all genetically similar!  None of the rats had been trained to run through the maze, and they had in fact been assigned randomly to the two groups.  However, the so-called "maze-bright" rats performed significantly better than the "maze-dull" rats from the very beginning and until the end of the experiment!  The "maze-dull" rats wouldn't even budge from the starting position in the maze.

Rosenthal published his findings in 1963 in the journal Behavioral Science (see "The effect of experimenter bias on the performance of the albino rat").  In a subsequent article published in Scientific American, Rosenthal and co-author Lenore Jacobson discussed the findings of the original rat study which sheds further light on what they called the "Pygmalion Effect".  Rosenthal and Jacobson reported, "The students with the allegedly brighter rats ranked their subjects as brighter, more pleasant, and more likeable than did the students who had allegedly 'duller' rats...Asked about their methods of dealing with the rats, the students with the 'bright' group turned out friendlier and more enthusiastic with the animals than the students with the 'dull' group had been.  The students with the 'bright' rats also said they handled their animals as well as more gently, than the students expecting poor performance did."

All of this would be purely academic if not for Rosenthal's subsequent experiments with teachers working with students in the classroom.  Lenore Jacobson was, in fact, the principal at Spruce Elementary School in San Francisco.  She had read Rosenthal's rat study and wrote back to Rosenthal, volunteering her students to participate in further studies ("If you ever 'graduate' to classroom children, please let me know if I can be of assistance").  Teachers at Spruce Elementary were told that Rosenthal and his team would be administering "The Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition" in the spring.  However, in truth, the "test" was nothing more than a standard IQ test.  After the testing was completed, teachers were informed that there were groups of students in each class who were academically gifted and who would "blossom" during the academic year.  Again, similar to the earlier rat maze experiments above, students were randomly assigned to groups.  One year later, students were re-tested using the same "Harvard Test".  Notably, the "blossoming" students score significantly better on the second test, while the other students scores didn't change.  

Once again, teachers had treated the "blossoming" students differently, without even realizing that they were doing so.  They were more encouraging with these students, provided them with additional help, and gave them positive feedback using warmer body language.  They almost never criticized these students.  Rosenthal and Jacobson published their findings in 1968 book, entitled Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual Development.

The German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being."  What's true for rats and elementary school students is also true for people in general.  What's true for teachers, as it turns out, is also true for leaders.  When leaders treat their teams with positive expectations, their teams actually perform better (see the Harvard Business Review article, "Pygmalion in Management" by J. Sterling Livingston).  Treat people in the opposite manner, and they will respond in kind (which is known as the "Golem effect").

Bear's Poem

I recently finished the book The Junction Boys by Jim Dent.  Honestly, I have mixed feelings about the story.  The book tells the story of legendary college football Paul "Bear" Bryant's first season as head coach at Texas A&M University in 1954.  He had recently left a successful head coaching stint at the University of Kentucky, where he had coached for eight seasons with an overall record of 60-23-5, finishing in 1950 as the champions of the Southeastern Conference and defeating the number one ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl that year.  The team finished his last season at Kentucky with a record of 7-2-1.  

The Texas A&M head coaching position was a huge step down.  He inherited a team that finished tied for last place in the Southwestern Conference with an overall record of 4-5-1.  The book tells the story of Coach Bryant's preseason training camp that was held in the small Texas town of Junction.  He wanted to hold his camp away from the media and away from the Texas A&M alumni.  The camp started with 115 players, but only a small handful (barely enough to field a football team) lasted through the 10 grueling days of "two-a-day" practices (I use the quotes because practices would last several hours and often into the night).  Players would literally try to escape from camp in the middle of the night by sneaking away and walking to the local bus station.  Players practiced despite being severely injured.  The coaching staff wouldn't let the players drink water during practice.  One player almost died from heat stroke.

By the end, the players had earned Coach Bryant's respect.  The team would finish the 1954 season with an overall record of 1-9.  The team greatly improved in subsequent seasons, winning the Southwestern Conference championship following the 1956 season.  Bryant left Texas A&M after the 1957 season for the head coaching job at his alma mater, the University of Alabama, where he would coach for the next 25 years, becoming the all-time leader in total wins (323) and national championships (6).  And yet, when it was all said and done, Coach Bryant would say that the 1954 1-9 Texas A&M team was his favorite.

Admittedly, the ends don't always justify the means, though Coach Bryant would clearly disagree on this point.  I will also say that Coach Bryant wasn't alone in restricting access to water during football practices.  Most coaches felt that letting the players drink water would make them "soft" (and surprisingly, despite all we know about heat stroke, that sentiment didn't change until all that long ago).  

What I do admire about Coach Bryant is that he didn't just hold his players to a high standard.  He also held himself to a high standard.  The book ended with a poem that Coach Bryant apparently kept with him and read almost every day.  The poem was written by Heartsill Wilson and is called "The Beginning of a New Day."  

I think the sentiment of the poem says a lot about how Coach Bryant led his life.  Here is the poem:

This is the beginning of a new day.

God has given me this day to use as I will.

I can waste it or use it for good.

What I do today is very important

because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.

When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever,

leaving something in its place I have traded for it.

I want it to be a gain, not a loss—good, not evil.

Success, not failure, in order that I shall not regret

the price I paid for it.

Incidentally, Paul Bryant was nicknamed "Bear" because of something that happened when he was a teenager.  He went to the Lyric Theatre in his hometown of Fordyce, Arkansas where anyone who was willing to wrestle a bear and last a full minute would win a dollar (which was a lot of money back then).  Bryant wrestled the bear, but the owner and the bear escaped without paying. As the University of Alabama put it, "He didn’t get the buck but he got a nickname."

The end of bureaucracy?

I wrote a post this past November about Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (see the post, "Future Shock").  Toffler first coined the term "future shock" in an article "The future as a way of life" in Horizon magazine in 1965.  He used the term in this context "to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time."  That change can be technological, cultural, or social in nature.  He wrote, "If agriculture is the first stage of economic development and industrialism the second, we can now see that still another stage - the third - has suddenly been reached."

As Toffler described it, society was (at least at that time of his book) just entering an entire new period or age, which he called the super-industrial society, which others have similarly labeled, the Information Age, post-industrial society, and post-modernism.  A post-industrial society has a number of important and defining characteristics, which include:

1. The economy undergoes a transition from the production of goods to the provision of services.

2. Knowledge becomes a valued form of capital.

3. Through technological advancements (e.g. automation) and globalization, both the value and importance of manual labor decline, while at the same time the need for professional knowledge workers (e.g. engineers, scientists, software developers, analysts) increases.

Toffler predicted that the transition to the super-industrial society would occur much quicker than similar transitions of the past.  Whereas previous generations had experienced gradual transformation over time, the newer generations growing up in modern society were facing constant, rapid shifts in everything from family life to work to values (which is why those living through this rapid period of change would be subject to "future shock").  Toffler further suggested three key features of the super-industrial society - transience, novelty, and diversity.  

Toffler used the word transience to describe the impermanence and shortened lifespan of all things in the super-industrial society.  He said, "We are moving swiftly into the era of the temporary product, made by temporary methods, to serve temporary needs...Transience is the 'new temporariness' in everyday life...It results in a mood, a feeling of impermanence."  He used the word novelty to describe the unceasing (i.e. constant) introduction of new things - technology, lifestyles, and social arrangements.  He said, "The future will unfold as an unending succession of bizarre incidents, sensational discoveries, implausible conflicts, and wildly novel dilemmas."  Finally, Toffler referred to diversity as the multiplicity of choices available in work, lifestyle, consumption, and identity.  He further wrote that when all three - transience, novelty, and diversity - converge, "we rocket the society toward an historical crisis of adaptation.  We create an environment so ephemeral, unfamiliar, and complex as to threaten millions with adaptive breakdown.  This breakdown is future shock."

The management scholar Warren Bennis first coined the term adhocracy in his 1968 book, The Temporary Society: What is Happening to Business and Family Life in America Under the Impact of Accelerating Change.  Toffler further popularized the term in his book Future Shock, which came out just two years later.  Both Bennis and Toffler felt that the acceleration of change that we are experiencing in society, both then and certainly now, doesn't lend itself to classic bureaucracy.  Rather, adhocracy describes a more flexible, adaptable, and informal organizational structure without bureaucratic policies or procedures.  Toffler wrote, "If it was Max Weber who first defined bureaucracy and predicted its triumph, Warren Bennis may go down in sociological textbooks as the man who first convincingly predicted its demise and sketched the outlines of the organizations that are springing up to replace it."

Bureaucracies - at least according to Bennis and Toffler - are rigid, hierarchical, slow-moving, and centralized (in regards to power and authority), which means that they are best suited to stable, unchanging environments.  Adhocracies, on the other hand, are temporary, flexible, and adaptive.  They place an emphasis on creativity, innovation, and rapid decision-making through experimentation.  Whereas bureaucracies are strictly hierarchical, decision-making in an adhocracy is team-based, collaborative, and decentralized (can anyone say, "Deference to Expertise" or "Pushing Authority to Information"?).  Toffler believed that an adhocracy was essential for on an organization to succeed in a fast-moving, rapidly evolving super-industrial society.

All that being said, as Martin Reeves, Edzard Wesselink, and Kevin Whitaker at the Boston Consulting Group point out in their essay, "The end of bureaucracy, again?", the bureaucracy remains the dominant paradigm even now, almost sixty years after Warren Bennis and Alvin Toffler predicted the end of bureaucracy.  A number of management experts have proposed alternative paradigms, and in many cases, organizations have tried to re-structure around these alternative paradigms - see for example Frederic Laloux's teal organization, Brian Robertson's holacracy, or the concept of self-managed teams.  While attractive in principle, few organizations have successfully adopted these different models.  Reeves, Wesselink, and Whitaker suggest that the solution is somewhere in the middle.  The organizations that will be most successful, both now and in the future, will have elements of both the classic bureaucracy and adhocracy.  What that organizational structure will look like is not currently known.  Reeves, Wesselink, and Whitaker write, "The exact shape of these new models is still undetermined, but enterprising leaders are currently developing them."  Referring to the teal organization, holacracy, and others, they go on to admit, "We can see hints of a revolution that will likely affect all companies and sectors eventually."

So, are we about to see the end of bureaucracy as we know it?  Probably not.  But we will certainly see the continuing evolution of different organizational models and paradigms for many years to come.  Survival in this VUCA world will depend upon it.

Know so much, but control nothing...

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus said, "Of all man's miseries, the bitterest is this: to know so much, and to have control over nothing."  What is Herodotus saying here?  I think he is expressing the frustration that many of us feel that even if we can understand the world clearly, we just don't have the requisite power to change it.  Wisdom and power don't necessarily go hand in hand.

Today, more than at any time in history, we are starting to understand the world on a macro- and micro-level.  We know more about how the world works than any generation that came before us, and yet, we are still relatively powerless to change it.  And on the surface, that acceptance that we don't always have the authority and power to change what happens may feel like a failure.  But it's not.

The ancient Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers (Zeno of Citium, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, among others) would tell us that we should concern ourselves only with those things that we can indeed control.  Everything else?  Let it be.  

Epictetus said, "It is not in our control to have everything turn out exactly as we want, but it is in our control to control how we respond to what happens."  Or more recently, Viktor Frankl said, "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing . . . to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances."  Frankl also said, "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves...Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant."

I have always enjoyed reading Stoic philosophy.  I just have to remind myself, every once in a while, what the greatest Stoic philosophers said about managing change and changing the world.  If wisdom is defined, at least according to Socrates, as knowing that you don't know everything (I think his exact quote was, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing"), then perhaps wisdom too is accepting that you can't change everything.

"Mistakenly seeking solitude"

For the last couple of years, I've been riding the Chicago Metra train back and forth to work.  Shortly after we moved to the northern suburbs of Chicago, the Illinois Department of Transportation began a three year $169 million bridge refurbishing project (among other improvements) on the Kennedy Expressway (Interstate 90/94) from the Edens Expressway (Interstate 94) junction all the way to the downtown Ohio Street exit.  The lane closures that went along with the construction project added about 45-60 additional minutes to my morning and afternoon commutes.  Talk about perfect timing!  Thankfully, the project finished this past October both on-time (actually, they finished one month earlier than originally planned) and on-budget (more on that in a future post)!  

Even though the Kennedy Expressway project is finished, I'm still riding the train to and from work.  I've really enjoyed the quiet time (see my posts, "The Fortress of Solitude" and "Solitude").  It's been a great time to sit, relax, and just think or read a book.  I have to be honest, other than the conductor, I don't really talk to anyone else during my commute.  And, as it turns out, my behavior is neither out of the ordinary for most commuters or even a new change in behavior (see my post "The Quiet Commute").

But wait, there's more to the story!  The other day, my wife shared an article with me that appeared in Classic Chicago Magazine earlier this year ("Remembering the nation's last private railroad commuter car").  The article was written by David A.F. Sweet and talked about Car 553, reportedly the nation's last private "club car" that ran from the Lake Bluff station to the Ogilvie Station in downtown Chicago.  As Sweet described it, "club cars" were quite popular during the middle of the 20th century.  He wrote, "Briefcases were shut and work was forgotten as bridge games, rather than a quest for profit, engrossed members."  In other words, commuters would pay a special membership fee to be allowed to ride in the exclusive car, which was more or less like a club (see a photo below).  Commuters could select food and drinks from a special menu, and Car 553 apparently even included a barber's chair, so that members could get a haircut or shave during the commute.  By the year 2016, Car 553 was the only operating commuter membership car in the United States.  Car 553 was removed from service in 2022, ending the era of the so-called "club car" for good. 

I can only wonder, if I had the option, whether I would choose to pay an additional membership fee (which ranged as high as $550 to $850 per calendar quarter) just to be able to ride in an exclusive car and talk with other commuters or play bridge!  I suspect that I would not.  The more important question, however, is whether something that encouraged human interaction and discourse is preferable to the choice to seek solitude that seems to be so prevalent in today's society.  As I've stated in the past, the former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has claimed an "an epidemic of loneliness" in today's society (please see my posts "The Loneliness Epidemic" and "Ubuntu").  Dr. Murthy places much of the blame on social media and smart phones, but I can't help but wonder if some of our loneliness is a consequence of our own choosing.  Is our desire for solitude at least in part to blame for our loneliness?  

Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder published an interesting study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology around ten years ago ("Mistakenly Seeking Solitude").  The accompanying press release from the University of Chicago said it best, "An interesting social paradox plays out every morning around the world as millions of people board commuter trains and buses: Human beings are one of the most social species on the planet, yet when in close proximity with one another – sitting inches away on a train – we routinely ignore each other."  Epley and Schroeder found that participants in their experiments not only underestimated strangers' interest in connecting, but they also reported positive experiences by both being spoken to and to speaking with strangers.  

Epley and Schroeder conducted a total of nine experiments, both in the field and in the laboratory setting.  Study participants were Chicago commuter train and public bus riders who were asked to talk to a stranger, to sit in solitude, or to do whatever they normally would do, then fill out a survey to measure how they felt afterwards.  Even though the study participants reported greater well-being when they did engage with strangers, they predicted precisely the opposite pattern of experiences.  Based on the survey results, study participants were reluctant to engage with strangers, because they felt that other people wouldn't be interested in talking.  Again, Epley and Schroeder found that the opposite was the case.  Not only were people open to making idle conversation, they found the experience much more pleasurable when they did, particularly compared to choosing silent solitude. 

In my post, "Connections", I talked about Aaron Hurst and "The Six Points of Connection" that can help foster a sense of community and restore our trust in society today.  We need to get back as a society to emphasizing personal connections and the "human touch" (see my post, "We all need the human touch...").  Perhaps being open to talking with strangers is a good starting point.

"It's happiness we're after..."

Albert Einstein is perhaps most famous for developing his theory of relativity, though he was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."  What is perhaps less well known is that he also was greatly interested in what Jessica Stillman, writing for Inc. magazine, called "the rules of our internal state of mind".  Einstein apparently told an interviewer in 1931, "It's happiness we're after".

Earlier in 1931, Einstein had delivered a talk entitled "Science and Happiness" at Caltech, during which he questioned whether science, as a field, was making the world a better place or a worse one.  He asked the students, "Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness?"  He next answered his own question, stating, "We have not yet learned to make sensible use of it."

Einstein had his own "theory of happiness" that can best be summarized as follows:  A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.  Like all things, ambition is good to a certain point.  Experts on happiness describe something known as the "hedonic treadmill."  We work hard in order to reach our personal and professional goals, and when we have achieved those goals, there is a sense of achievement and satisfaction that leads to happiness.  Regardless of how we define success (e.g., achieving a certain salary or title), once we achieve that degree of success, our sense of achievement and the satisfaction and happiness that comes with it is only temporary.  Once we grow accustomed to that level of success (and the happiness that comes with it), we find that we have to work even harder to reach our next goal or the next level of success.  Einstein suggests that we should be content with the success we have right now.  

Ambition can be healthy, when it gives us a sense of achievement and fulfillment.  However, too much focus on achieving materialistic goals and levels of success can actually make us less happy in the long-run, particularly when we neglect other areas of our life, such as family and our personal health.  University of Notre Dame professor Timothy Judge measured ambition and achievement on various measures of health and happiness in 717 individuals participating in a study conducted over seven decades ("On the value of aiming high: The causes and consequences of ambition").  Those individuals who scored higher on measures of ambition were only slightly happier than the less ambitious individuals.  More importantly, they lived shorter lives!  As the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca noted, "Ambition is like a gulf, everything is swallowed up in it and buried; besides the dangerous consequences of it."

Unfortunately, in today's society, we often attribute success with fame and fortune.  More importantly, we often equate personal success with happiness.  But since antiquity, philosophers like Seneca have known that our happiness is not a product of anything material.  Instead, we create our happiness through the choices we make.  Rather than attributing happiness to our goals, we should focus on the journey instead.  It sounds like Einstein knew this too.

There's an interesting aside to Einstein's theory of happiness.  In November of 1922,  Einstein was visiting Japan and staying at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.  He had just learned that he would receive the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.  During his stay there, a bellhop came to his hotel room to give him a message.  He didn't have any spare cash in his pockets for a tip, so in lieu of a tip, he wrote the 17 words above, in German, on a piece of hotel stationary, hoping that it would become valuable in the future.  The slip of paper apparently sold for $1.56 million in October 2017.  The seller of the Imperial Hotel note is reportedly a grandson of the Japanese bellhop's brother!

Champs or chumps?

My last post ("It takes 10 hands to score a basket...") focused on the myth of so-called superteams, teams that are loaded with talent but seemingly fail to live up to expectations.  I specifically highlighted the 1980 Olympic Team USA men's basketball team, which defeated a team of NBA All-Stars 5 out of 6 exhibition games during the "Gold Medal Series" (recall that the United States boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics, so the team was forced to play exhibition games against the NBA instead).  I also discussed an even better example, that of the 1980 Olympic Team USA men's hockey team, which defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union team 4-3.  They next beat Finland in a come-from-behind fashion to win the Gold Medal, but it was the "Miracle on Ice" game against the Soviets that will be remembered forever.

My point is that you don't have to be a superteam to win championships.  As a matter of fact, most superteams don't (and one could arguably state that most superteams actually flop - see my posts "Superstars" and "Superstars and the mess in Cleveland").  What often separates championship teams versus superteams is team culture, which is often called team chemistry.  As the old sayings go, "Chemistry is Culture" and "Culture eats Strategy".  Gregg Gregory (see "Behind the scenes of so-called superteams: 4 secrets") suggests that there are four behind-the-scenes secrets that championship teams do and so-called superteams do not:

1. Championship teams are selfless.

The members of championship teams each work hard to make everyone around them better, caring very little, if at all, who gets individual credit.  The team's success is more important than individual success (as hockey coach Herb Brooks said so well in the 2004 Disney movie, Miracle, "The name on the front of the jersey means a whole lot more than the one on the back!"  

2. Championship teams work hard.

Practice matters.  More importantly, the right kind of practice matters (see my post "Practice makes better, but does practice make perfect?" on the concept of deliberate practice and the 10,000 hour rule).  As Steve Kerr, who has been a NBA World Champion as both player and coach, says, "There are no magic plays.  You win based on effort, unmet focus, and being brilliant at the little details."  Championship teams practice as hard as they play in games, if not harder.

3. Championship teams are built around character.

Championship teams don't just build their teams based upon talent.  They look for players with the right kind of character.  They look for players who are going to be great teammates, which helps foster a team culture.  I am reminded of a great video post by the author and motivational speaker, Simon Sinek, which I also discussed in my post "Attitude > Talent".  Sinek talked about how the Navy SEALS emphasize trust over performance.  In other words, talent is not enough - having the right team-focused attitude is key.  Again, as hockey coach Herb Brooks said in the movie, "I'm not looking for the best players.  I am looking for the right players."

4. Championship teams emphasize teamwork.

As the legendary Michael Jordan said, "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."  Teamwork is so much more important than talent.  As Jon Gordon says, "Team beats talent when talent isn't a team."  The NBA All-Stars in 1980 had talent, but they weren't a team.