It's a long story (so I won't bore you with it), but my wife and I will be finishing up a move to a more permanent residence today. We've been renting a condo in downtown Chicago for the past 2 years, and while we are going to miss living downtown, we are excited to finally have a place of our own. Needless to say, transitions are never easy. We switched our cable and Internet to the new place, so for a few days in our condo we were without cable and Internet. We decided to watch a DVD of Game 7 of the 2016 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians. You may remember that I am a diehard Cubs fan (see the excitement in my post, "The World Has Changed - Fly the W!" and the despair in my two more recent posts, "Lovable Losers Once More and "The Chicago Cubs Fire Sale"). While I was watching the game, I was quickly reminded of the importance of so-called role players.
Not everyone can be the superstar of the team. And to use a sports analogy (I promise I will get away from sports in a minute), not everyone can be a starter. Every successful, championship team has a good mix of superstars and at least one role player. According to at least one coach, "A role player is often the player who comes off the bench. He/she understands and accepts his/her role on the team. While on the bench, the good role player keeps his/her head in the game, and observes what's going on, where the weaknesses are in the defense, which opposing players are "killing us", what's happening on the boards, etc. He/she is "ready to go" when the coach calls."
Most sports teams have role players - individuals who specialize in one or two areas of the game and who focus his/her attention on that specific aspect of the game in order to serve the needs of the team. The role player accepts his/her job, even if it is a limited one, because the team's success depends upon it. The role player is often behind the scenes, or as another coach put it, "The role player shuns the glory of attention, praise, and impressive statistics for the sake of the team. In doing this, the role player revels in another kind of glory."
Dexter Fowler played centerfield for the 2016 World Series Champion Chicago Cubs. Even though he often started (he played in 125 games that year), but his key role on the team that year was to bat in the lead-off spot. As sports commentator Joe Buck said during the Game 7 broadcast, "When Dexter Fowler gets on base, the Cubs win." One sports pundit described Fowler's role as the "You go, we go" mantra. There is absolutely no question that Fowler had a great year for the Cubs (his on-base percentage of .393 was a career-best), which he turned into a five-year $82.5 million deal with the St. Louis Cardinals the following year. Unless you are a diehard Cubs fan, you probably wouldn't even mention his name if you were asked to name the best players on the Cubs roster that year (you'd probably name Kris Bryan, Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Schwarber, and Jon Lester).
Every team - whether its a sports team or an organization - needs role players. Harvard Business School professor Thomas J. DeLong and health care consultant and entrepreneur Vineeta Vijayaraghavan call them "B players" (they use the label "A players" for the superstars). They write, "A players, it is true, can make enormous contributions to corporate performance. Yet in our collective 20 years of consulting, research, and teaching, we have found that companies' long-term performance - even survival - depends far more on the unsung commitment and contributions of their B players."
These B players (role players) may lack the luster and ambition of the superstars - DeLong and Vijayaraghavan find that the B players typically avoid the limelight. But make no mistake, the team's success depends upon them. They are the "glue" that holds the team together. They are the "table setters" that keep things in motion. They are the "go to" people in the company, the ones who seem to be connected to everyone and everything in the organization.
Every team needs a Dexter Fowler. Legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne once said, "The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven." Rockne had his share of superstars, but more importantly, he had his role players too.
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