The Program

2Determining “Best”

THE PROGRAM HAS one mission: develop better leaders and create more cohesive teams. We help construct world-class organizations. World-class organizations have world-class cultures, and those cultures’ foundations are its “best” people.

World-class organizations have world-class cultures, and those cultures’ foundations are its “best” people.

“Best”, for any organization, occurs at the overlap in the Venn diagram shown in Figure 2.1. One circle represents the organization’s Core Values (more on this in Chapter 3) and the other represents talent. The “best” person for any organization is one who embodies that team’s Core Values, and who is also incredibly talented. In the short term, talent helps a team accomplish its mission. Its culture, as defined by its Core Values, combined with talent, ensures that team’s long-term ability to do so.

Figure 2.1 The best people for your organization have talent and share your organization’s core values.

In order to lay the foundation of a Championship Culture, the question we must first answer is not what we want our organizations to stop doing, but rather how we want them to start behaving. As the leader, we do this by first determining our Core Values.

One of the first lessons all Marine Corps officers are taught (although not all learn it) is never to ask our Marines to do something that we aren’t willing to ...