Super Bowl Lii is coming this weekend pitting two iconic American cities - Boston and Philadelphia - against each other to see which will field the best football team in the land. And as players, coaches and fans of the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles prepare for the Big Game, there will be heated debate about who will win the matchup. But, one thing that is indisputable, regardless of who scores the most points on Sunday, it's the Patriots that are the winners.
You see, the Patriots organization has figured out how to cultivate team success on a consistent basis over nearly 2 decades, by developing a system that not only is expert in identifying talents, but that understands how best to consistently transform those talents into organizational strengths. The team's leader prime mover - the initial source of energy directed towards a goal - is the coach Bill Belichick.
Results don't lie, as you can see in this great piece on the subject from the Harvard Business Review.
Since 2001 under Belichick, the Patriots have finished first or second in their division every year, failed the make the playoffs only twice and been to eight Super Bowls, of which they've won at least five. This consistency is a demonstration that leadership development linked to success is often formulaic.
For our purposes, we'll define talent as naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling and behavior that can be productively applied. Strengths, on the other hand, are defined as the ability to consistently provide near perfect performance in any given activity. And to achieve the kind of consistent success that Belichick and his Patriots have enjoyed, they have applied a simple equation: Talent x Investment = Strength.
But you might be wondering, what does this have to do with my business? Perhaps you don't have the luxury of hand-picking talent to fit into a system relies on million-dollar coaches and athletes. Regardless of your organizational challenges, we believe the Talent-to-Strength equation can be successfully applied to your teams and result in improved performance across a multitude of domains. And it is this philosophy of system design that many organizations fail to connect to their activities regularly.
Here are some ways to begin thinking about how to convert your team's talents into strengths:
- Adopt a strengths assumption approach to problem solving
- Establish an awareness of individual and team strengths
- Apply a team's organizational strengths daily
- Identify and track key performance metrics
This is what we do with our clients. We work with them to understand how best to leverage the talents of their team members. It's a way to develop a framework that helps team leaders to put teammates in the best possible positions to help the organization succeed and encourage individuals to utilize their talents more consistently.
For more information on how to help organizations uncover the talents of its employees and turn those talents into strengths, please contact OVP Management Consulting Group Inc. We look forward to helping your organization grow and win!
