Inside the ordinary life of the long game of building a team
Field notes on the people, places, and systems that keep things moving.
The bigger picture
Building a team is slower than selecting one. The difference is whether people are allowed to learn in public.
The first version of anything is a hypothesis. What matters is whether the people involved are allowed to revise it once reality arrives.
“The Tuesday session is the real season.”
The practical view
Warm-ups are a form of insurance. They are easy to skip precisely when they are most useful.
The strongest version of the long game of building a team leaves room for the person who arrives late, the one who is unsure, and the one who has done it before.
The open question
Teams improve when feedback is specific and kind. “Try again” is not a coaching instruction; “start half a step later” is.
There is a difference between improving a system and replacing its memory. The second is much easier to do by accident.
For now, the long game of building a team remains a work in progress. That is not a disappointment; it is the normal condition of anything still alive.