Team Code of Honor. Blair Singer

lives on in spite of what happens. The bigger the team gets, the tighter the code needs to be to ensure peak performance. If you are a five-person team in a Phoenix, Arizona, office, the code is easily supported. But as you open offices in New York, London, Singapore, Sydney, Los Angeles, Chicago, and so forth, it gets tougher to hold to the same standards.

      Try this experiment: Take about a two- to three-foot piece of kite string and tie a small weight to the end of it. Twirl it above your head as a cowboy would a lasso. Swing it faster. What happens? You have to hold on tighter. Lengthen the string. What happens? You have to hold on even tighter and pick up speed in order to keep the weight aloft.

      The same is true of teams as they grow in numbers and spread out geographically. The code has to be stronger, better supported and revisited with more frequency as size increases. You also have to pick up speed or the whole project never gets off the ground. This is backward to what happens as companies grow. They typically get more bureaucratic and slow down.

      On the other side of the coin, one of my clients, Singapore Airlines, engages in what some would consider an unreasonable demand on their senior management staff. The incredible number of visits from senior staff to remote stations and regions around the globe continues to reestablish the culture, attitude and code from Singapore itself. Their execs sacrifice time from family and spend countless hours in the air in an incredible commitment to the spirit of that forty-plus-year-old airline. They combine speed, frequency and deep cultural attitudes into an organization that has continued to be rated as the number-one airline in the world, which has also continued to make profit quarter after quarter through even the toughest times in the industry.

      In the case of existing teams, the code must be a matter of choice. If people have been on the team for a long time without clear rules, they have to be given a choice to play or not with the new code. It’s unfair to spring new rules on people without warning or reasons why. But they do have to choose! It’s tough, but remember that in the absence of rules, people play by their own rules. The biggest collisions in life occur because people play by different sets of rules.

      The funny thing is that, even in the face of those collisions, both parties will always feel that they are completely justified in their position and that they have done nothing wrong. Why? Because they were playing by their rules. Disgruntled employees complain that their boss was too demanding and they end up quitting their jobs because of it. Their rules said, “We do whatever it takes to complete the tasks as long we get paid for everything we do from nine to five and after that it’s overtime.” Their boss’s rules were, “We do whatever it takes to complete the tasks whether we get paid or not.” Neither one is right or wrong. That’s why you create a code to decide what that means in a sane moment.

      The mechanics who work for NASCAR are all very talented and experienced. They have to be. But no matter how much experience they start with, when they are hired, their first duty is to stack tires. You know why? Because not only do they need to understand the importance of every single job performed on that team, but they have to understand this new culture that they’re now a part of! As a new team member, they assume a position serving others first ... not of being a star.

      When choosing new team players, you have to observe if they are willing to enter the team from a position of serving others and lying low, listening and learning. If they are, you know you have a person who is doing his or her best to earn the right to be a great team member. Every organization has its own set of rules, its own way of doing things. A clear understanding of expectations and rules is critical for anyone joining any kind of team. Without it, I wouldn’t want to be in the car that the new mechanic worked on, and neither would you!

      Playing Strengths

      We’ve talked about building a team by asking important questions, determining motivation and setting expectations. But the next component is perhaps the most important in knowing who’s on the team. If you remember nothing else from this book, remember this: The key to success is playing to people’s strengths.

      When was the last time you were given a “performance evaluation” at work? I’ll bet I can tell you what happened. You were shown a sheet of paper that listed your strengths and your weaknesses. And what were you told to do? Improve your weaknesses.

      I am here to tell you, that is a colossal waste of time. It’s hard enough to figure out what you are really good at. Why waste your time trying to fix something that you may be chromosomally programmed not to do? Why on earth would you tell someone to do something he’s lousy at?

      A great team is a group of people who all play to their own unique strengths with a Code of Honor holding them tightly together. One of Rich Dad’s core concepts is that when you take on a business partner, you look for someone with a unique ability. Why? Because you complement each other, you fill in each other’s gaps and ultimately increase the value, quality and versatility of your product or service.

      Want to create a championship team from scratch? Find out what each member is great at. Not just good or competent at, but great. And when you’re done, you’ve got yourself a team that is great at what they do, but also satisfied and confident. Everyone wins.

      Again, the same is true for families. For instance, in the partnership my wife and I share, I work with the business, sales and generating income. That’s my unique ability. But my wife’s unique ability in the business is her eye for detail. She can also spot patterns in an instant. She is also a great