In my 25 years of professional endeavors, the lessons I apply the most often…the tools I use to achieve success…the skills I call on every day…all of these things I experienced and developed to one degree or another through sports. In fact, I’ve written at great length about the importance of sports in my life and used sports as an analogy for discussing how to build a great team.

At the beginning of every season, the various pundits make prognostications about which teams are going to win the championship. Sometimes they are right – picking the Patriots or the Warriors or Chelsea is a better bet than most – but few people picked the Falcons or the Indians last season and they were both within an eyelash of grabbing the ring. And in the world of soccer, both Leicester City AND Sounders FC won championships.

The natural question is why some teams perform better than others, and how to improve the performance of those that are struggling. Whether you are looking at a business, a government agency, or a non-profit, there are a number of ways to tackle this challenge, but to me, it usually comes down to five important things:

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