Steve Ritter

This year’s discoveries were unexpected. The common theme was courage. Each of the teams highlighted in this retrospective were elevated by the bravery to abandon comfort and ignite change. They didn’t wait for the business landscape to demand a reaction. They listened to their clients, anticipated the future, and created solutions. Please enjoy a sampling of excellence.

Congratulations to Laura Gettinger, a Chicago-based professional wellness consultant, for winning the 2013 Team Clock Institute Holiday Matching Game. Laura correctly matched all five team challenges with the outcomes resulting from their struggles. Below are brief summaries of each resolution.

Let’s kick off the holiday season with a game. Below are five team challenges observed in 2013. Following the challenges are five outcomes. Can you match the challenge with the outcome?

Gallup’s recent employee engagement data paints a pessimistic picture of the modern workplace with more than seven out of ten workers either disengaged (“sleepwalking”) or actively disengaged (“toxic”). That leaves a courageous minority of passionate talent who would run through a wall for your organization. Lost in the metrics are the rare organizations that have devoted themselves to a culture of 100% engagement – no sleepwalkers or poison.

Four families. Four cities. Seventy-seven gatherings. Nobody imagined the depth of bond that would unfold when the original commitment to meet three times per year was made over twenty-five years ago.Yet, year after year, without exception, participants rotated from Chicago to Detroit to Cincinnati to Indianapolis to enjoy each new chapter of the group’s evolution. What began as an assembly of eight young adults grew to three generations of thirty-four people spanning nearly sixty years in age.

Although they impact thousands of lives, you’re unlikely to meet them face to face. Most of their waking hours are spent developing others who become your most trusted partners. Like your physician, minister, and attorney, your financial adviser is selected with care. The relationship is anchored in trust, accountability, talent, and character. Recently, thirty-six of the nation’s top financial advisers gathered in Milwaukee to strengthen their teams. Each leader represented a team of about twenty specialists whose group owns stewardship over the financial stability of thousands of lives.

A widely respected Fortune 500 company has decided to sponsor a race. It’s a race to high performance. Although the winners will be judged by achieving common business goals, the route each team takes to get there is up to them. Each of the forty teams in the race will have a different starting point.

Slowing down to savor the year’s highlights brings a blend of satisfaction and anticipation. From team to team, the stories of courage, innovation, and transformation have a unifying theme: harnessing adversity to fuel growth and change. Consider a few examples.

In the morning, the organization’s Chief Innovation Officer laughed as she detailed the creative tasks that filled her typical day. At lunch, another company’s Controller described how good it felt when the books balance. In the afternoon, a school teacher lit up as he told the story of one of his students’ “aha!” moments. At dinner, the real estate agent described the perfect fit between the family and the home they had located together.

In today’s economy, there’s no longer any tolerance for error. The airline industry figured this out a long time ago since the consequences of a glitch are grave. The health care industry isn’t far behind. For some teams, absolute interdependence is non-negotiable.