The Primes: How any Group can Solve any Problem

CHASE–LOSE

Chase teamwork, leadership, morale, and culture and you will surely lose them all.

I've always been fascinated with high-performance teams, cultures, and leaders. In the last 20 years, I've done a fair amount of team building and leadership coaching. CHASE–LOSE revealed itself slowly to me over time. This PRIME has profoundly affected how I approach problem solving, transformation, team building, culture creation, and leadership development today because it reveals a seemingly counterintuitive truth: Often what we CHASE is not what we catch. It has become popular in recent years to seek certain admirable qualities in business operations. CHASE–LOSE reveals the fallacy that their pursuit will lead to success.

When we CHASE team, we LOSE team.

When we CHASE culture, we LOSE culture.

When we CHASE leadership, we LOSE leadership.

When we CHASE innovation, we LOSE innovation.

This PRIME illuminates the fact that teamwork, innovation, leadership, and all the other characteristics of high-performance CULTURE are not ends in themselves. Rather, they are skills and competencies that we refine during the relentless pursuit of extraordinary outcomes. CHASE–LOSE puts work and the nature of work in the right order.

Instead of CHASING the characteristics of high-performance CULTURE, this principle guides leaders and groups to:

• CHASE a meaningful outcome.
• Deal quickly with whatever ...