How Fast Is Your ‘B’ Team?

Where is the overall position of the organization? It’s not with the leaders. It’s back at base camp. It’s not, “How far ahead of everybody else can the leaders advance?” but, “How fast can the leaders engage others to move the entire company forward?” The success of the organization is defined by the last group, not the first, when it comes to measuring total performance.

In reality, leaders almost always conceptually outrun their engagement and execution supply lines. Everybody can relate to this. Leaders spend months developing a strategy, considering, contemplating, contrasting and dismissing the alternatives and possibilities for future success. When they’re finally done, they craft this into a “strategy in a box” and ship it off to their people. Then the A team wonders why the B team doesn’t get excited about it immediately. The B team can’t realize how critical the strategy is because they have no idea what went into its creation. The focus must change, from surmounting the next peak to getting everybody to the top of the current one.

So back to that house with only the weight-bearing walls in place. We need to include the collective knowledge and execution of the B team to finish the house and make it valuable.

Success = A + B
The point is that there are no bit parts, no small roles. Success requires all people to work together, regardless of their places in the organization. There are millions of examples of what can happen when a group of “regular people” get organized and commit to a common outcome.

Here’s one: There’s a city near Dallas called Wylie. It’s an old town filled with ordinary people. As with many old towns, the local playground had become dilapidated and hazardous. There was no money in the town budget for a new playground. Five years ago, the community formed a corporation, asked for donations and held a festival to raise money and create excitement.

Soon, it had $125,000 and dozens of in-kind pledges. Then, organizers met with the children to ask what they wanted for the playground. The enthusiasm spread, and soon nearly every business in town was donating something — from fencing to concrete to tiles for the children’s handprints. Families got together to purchase a rope walk, a toddler slide or a rock wall.