Belgian horses
Belgian draft horses are powerful animals. A single horse can pull around 8,000 pounds - about the weight of a large African elephant.
When two are harnessed together, their pulling power doesn’t just double, but triples to nearly 24,000 pounds. That’s if they’re strangers - horses raised and trained independently.
The real magic happens, though, when two horses that have trained together, worked together and learned each other’s movements are working as a team. Reports suggest that in those circumstances, they can shift loads of up to 30,000 pounds. That’s the equivalent of a fully-loaded cement truck or a small commercial aircraft.
Your company is similar. When talented, smart people work in true alignment, the effect is much greater than the sum of its parts. This is what High Performance Culture is really about.
For Belgian horses to achieve this incredible pulling power, their trainers must think carefully about matching them, taking into account their size and strength, the rhythm of their movements and their temperaments. For greatest impact, the animals train side by side, getting to know each other and working to the same goals and within the same parameters.
As a result, they’re able to anticipate each other’s movements, pulling at the same moment, stepping in stride and distributing the resistance equally. It’s this synchronisation that turns raw power into exponential force.
Teams operate on the same principle. You can bring together groups of smart, capable individuals, but if they’re pulling in different directions, even slightly, or if their timing, communication and working methods are misaligned, you’ll never realise their full potential.
Raw horsepower - talent, experience, energy and drive - will only get you so far. This is why elite sports teams spend so much time on communication, timing, trust and positioning, bringing the best out of the individual skill of each player to achieve a cohesive, coherent style of play that elevates them beyond their competitors.
In High Performance Cultures, it’s not always the case that people work harder. They work better, amplifying each other’s strengths and multiplying their results through co-ordinated effort.
It takes a huge amount of effort to get this right. But the payoff is incredible. If you’ve invested in brilliant, ambitious people, but not in the time it takes to properly align them, the job is only halfway done. When you identify complementary strengths and shared values, create shared language and rituals, clarify the mission, purpose and vision repeatedly and build trust in your team, your chances of success increase exponentially.
Stop leaving potential on the table. Get your culture right, and reap the rewards.
(We’ve spent years uncovering the secrets of High Performance Culture, and we’re sharing them, free of charge, in a series of online events. Choose a date and reserve your space now at Decoding the Pattern: The Secrets of High Performance)