There’s a measurable difference between Good and Great.  It comes down to how much team members care about:

• Why they are working together, their shared purpose;
• How they accomplish their duties;
• What gets done;
• Each other.

The last point is the one that puts a team over the top and propels them to Greatness.  You can study championships of all stripes and successful enterprises of every description; where you discover excellence, peak performance over an extended period of time, you are bound to find people who care deeply about one another.

We all have goals and aspirations.  It’s virtually impossible to realize them without the help of others and the same is true for them.  We need one another to become our best; we need teachers, advisors, coaches, directors and believers.  Sometimes we need love; other times we benefit more from tough love.  But that’s just for starters.

We need to see what a team can accomplish together and understand how one person out of sync can undermine the effort.  (Just consider what it takes to build and support a cheerleader’s pyramid!)  We need to believe in the others around us.  We need to be able to pass the ball when another team member has the better shot.  We need to care enough about those around us to protect one another – and the mission.

Sometimes this lesson is demonstrated dramatically, heroically and occasionally tragically.  We all remember the fire fighters of NYPD on 9/11 and have heard the stories of battlefield heroism about those who protect our very freedom.  But this same theme plays out daily in the workplace, through a thousand small gestures, within the teams who excel at what they do and which aspire to greatness.

I observed a team this week that was celebrating a “Three-Peat” Customer Service Championship.  That’s a very rare feat; if you compare what they accomplished to NCAA football, you’ll discover that there are 125 Division one teams playing the sport, but:

• 40 have won National Championships in the past 100 years;
• 9 have won back-to-back championships;
• Only 2 have won “Three-Peats” and the last time that happened was 80 years ago!

There are plenty of reasons “Why” teams win, but I believe that those who can achieve and sustain the highest levels in their field must steadily improve and find their strength in each other.  What gets you there won’t keep you there; what will sustain you is genuine caring for each other.

Only when the Team is strong and unified can the organizational mission be accomplished in a way that sets a company apart.  It isn’t product, technology, magic or good luck; it’s all about caring more than your competition, but especially for one another.