That is all great news – now for the not so great news! Although, the US track and field team did extremely well, we then have the US Men’s 4 x 100 team that was a huge embarrassment. The US team in almost every Olympics is favored to win gold and this year was no different with the individual times of these 4 athletes showing they should win every time they compete. But alas, the first handoff went so poorly that the two runners actually ran into each other and then made the baton pass outside of the passing zone to be disqualified or DQ’d. What a hot mess! Even if they finished first the DQ meant their finishing place didn’t matter. In the same event, the Men’s team hasn’t won a gold medal since 2000, they won a silver medal in 2004, that was a small consolation prize, I guess.

The US men’s 4 x 100 team issue goes back to the basics: communication, teamwork and practice, practice, practice. Of course, there were a number of excuses for the failure here. Among them, the team doesn’t have much time to practice and they don’t know who will be on the final team until the day before, several athletes are worn out due to competing in many other races at the Olympics, and finally, some athletes may have injuries that they are working through by this time in the track season. This is all true; however, the interesting thing is that the same issue didn’t happen to the Women’s team and the women did win their relay event on Saturday evening!

When it comes to teamwork, like many organizational issues, go back the basics when your team is missing deadlines, quality is slipping, budgets are sliding or you are having employee turnover issues on a specific team. I love the KISS principal, which means Keep it Simple Stupid. In today’s workplace many leaders want complexity in their solutions, but I recommend going back to the basics and you may turn a dysfunctional team into a high performing team with a lot of hard work, focus and great leadership.

Small and medium-sized businesses may not have the time or expertise to implement the necessary people strategies for business success. The ideas above can be easily implemented by you to help improve the performance of your employees which leads to increased employee engagement and increasing the bottom line. We are here to help you with the people side of your business: employee engagement, retention programs, performance management, vision, and strategic plans, leadership development, selection & onboarding, compensations programs, organizational design, employee handbooks, core values, and all things HR-related.