WHEN THE TEAM IS THE GOAL



It was 7 am and Rei was still in bed. Her eyes were looking at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her mind was following each step of the 3.8km he had to run later that day in the Princess Ekiden (relay) Corporate Marathon of Fukuoka. She took her phone as she had just received a text message. It was Marie, her best friend and a relay runner in her team later that day. “hi Rei, are you up? I am so nervous. Will we make it to the national competition?”. “Of course! 😊”. She replied. “See you in an hour downstairs”.
Both lived in Fukuoka’s university dorm, were 19-year-old and had met last year as they both started working some hours a week for Iwatani Sangyo corporation in an internship. Marie was the one that had seen the internal announcement looking for runners for the famous marathon. It was six months ago and they had trained very hard. Their goal to qualify for the national competition did not seem too far away according to the most experimented runners in the team who had participated in the past in the same competition.
Rei had a coffee and an energy bar for breakfast and got herself ready. It was an easy short walk from the dorm to the place where she would run. She was the second runner of the team. Marie was the third. They wished each other good luck as Marie went to find her spot a bit further away.
Stretches, short runs, some small chat and a lot of silence and tension before the race started. In just about 10 minutes Rei could see the first participants sprinting towards the first Tasuki (sash) exchange. Her teammate was third. That was promising. She took the sash firmly. It was her turn!
She ran at a good pace, not giving everything in the first two kilometres, accelerating in the third and with the aim of taking the second position before handing over the sash. She could already see Marie in the distance waving at her and ready to take off.
And then…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x68IyB6vGrY
Iida tripped over, fell and hit her leg on the tarmac in an awkward position. At that precise moment she realized two things. The first is that she would get the tasuki to Marie no matter what. The second is that the leg was fractured.
She crawled till Marie despite the pain, despite the blood, despite she was left behind by all runers, despite the judge was begging her to stop and despite the team manager was desperately (and unsuccessfully) trying from the distance to pull her team out of the race after that incident.
Marie was in tears waiting for her friend Rei but as she took the sash she never looked back. As to Rei, the team was the goal.


As managers we often struggle in finding the balance between creating a team with a common goal to get everybody to move at the same pace and having different speeds within the team to manage the different ambitions and talents. The concept of team also gets diluted many times with virtual work and in matrix organizations.
-      How much effort do you put daily in creating that team spirit versus fostering individual ambitions?
-      Do you see Rei’s boldness reflected in the way your team members act? Would you like to see more of it or less of it?
-      What can we learn from Rei? And what can we learn from Marie?



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