Jarrod Smith

How to stay an average team: 1. Set reasonable goals. 2. Take 3 years to build the actual standards required. 3. Wait until you earn the right to aim higher. All that sounds like healthy team-building, but it's dead wrong and it's anti-competitive. Whatever you aim at sets the responsibilities, the expectations, and the effort behind it. Set reasonable goals and you'll get reasonable effort, but you'll never get the effort required to win. Nobody works like a champion if the goal is reasonable. Reasonable goals hand everyone an excuse before the season starts. Give people an option to be less than the best, and they'll take it. Teams that aim lower act weaker. Less effort. Weak discipline. Fragile confidence that cracks under the adversity of unforgiving competitive situations. Teams that aim higher act stronger. When the goal is to be the best (THE BEST!), people will start acting like it. More effort. Stronger discipline. Enduring confidence that gets stronger the more it gets tested, win or lose. Don't put limits on what your team can do. There is only one aim worth choosing in a competitive arena: BE THE BEST TEAM. Period. It's not a prediction or promise. It's a pursuit. And it's necessary because it creates the reference point for measuring every day of work: IS THIS GOOD ENOUGH TO MAKE US THE BEST?