Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?: Olympic-winning Strategies for Everyday Success - Second Edition

Great groups ship. “They are places of action, not think tanks or retreat centers devoted solely to the generation of ideas.” Warren characterized the successful collaborations he studied as “dreams with deadlines.

1. Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started.


2. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short t

• What everyone else thinks about the challenge: What is happening? What’s the real challenge?


• What they themselves believe is possible — what futures can be created with this group?


• What does the group believe is possible?


• What are we willing to try? How much risk are we willing to endure?


• How committed is the group to the chall

Here are some questions we can begin with, every time we set out to do our work together. And yes, they’re worth asking out loud, worth answering in writing, and worth committing to the answers: What’s the specific change this team is going to make? What’s my personal role in making that change happen? What do I need to learn to support or lead thi