The Dream Team

I enjoyed various roles, projects, and teams throughout my career to elevate our business to even higher levels. To me, the team was just as important as a result. Back in late 2000, I worked with the ultimate dream team. We were working on a national program for consumer retention strategy and execution. The 'dream team' was led by an overall good guy who valued his members and was wicked smaarrt; the members contained people from across the nation with different backgrounds and experiences that achieved goals that seemed impossible, but because we were on in it together-we, rocked. I often think about those long workdays that ran until late nights, travel to various call centers and HQ, and team bonding. The work was exhausting, and we achieved significant progress in moving the company forward, but what I cherish the most is the relationships. My team members are my friends, and we worked together as a team for the company's good. There was no "I" on this team; if someone had a problem or questions, we worked together to accomplish the goal, no matter who 'owned' the KPI. The 'dream team' members impacted my life both in and out of work, and after a decade-plus, I still consider them my friends. 

My reflection and shout outs come from my current reading list. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, a Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni (yes, I am reading it for fun), talks about the ultimate competitive advantage is teamwork. Reading through the chapters and revealing the characters made me stop and think about the perfect team. In many ways, the 'dream team' is how teams do things right, and the experience was terrific. 

"A team that focuses on collective results….enjoys success and suffers failure acutely. Our team had trust in each other, engage, no idea was a bad idea, held each other accountable, committed to the plan of action, and focused on achieving collective results. Now I am not going to lie, sometimes it was crazy-town, and we were frustrated, but we leaned on each other, talked to each other, worked as a team together. It is why, to this day, this will always be my' dream team'. Although most of us are in different organizations, industries, and stages of our life, we always come back to the 'dream team.' 

Since my 'dream-team' days, I have had many other outstanding teams too many to list (Furler, Kayla, Christine, Mia, Erica, JDP, Joyce, Joe) and many not so functional teams. 

But you, my 'dream team', you are my perfect example of what a team should look like. 

Shout out: In no particular order: TPP, Master Bill, JKT, RNF, MF, Frank, Cool D, Ken, John X, Bryan, Meanie, and Curty,