Purpose, People, and Process.

March Madness is upon us … that magical time of year where the best of the best lay it all on the line. Storied, traditional powerhouse basketball programs compete against programs often only a fraction of their size … the classic David versus Goliath. I don’t know about you, but it is the performance of those smaller programs, who so often make so much out of so little, that capture my attention. What allows David to compete against Goliath? What key elements allow those Cinderella stories to emerge year after year?

I am a student of those smaller programs because I think we all have so much to learn from them. Most of us are not in positions blessed with huge budgets or financial donors knocking on our doors, etc. Instead, we make the very most of what we’ve been given. I am fortunate in that the CSUVetCE team is one such Cinderella program … we are small in stature, but mighty in impact. Some of what has allowed us to perform at a level that is above ourselves is the 3 P’s that we’ve learned by watching what allows those small NCAA basketball programs do mighty things. Purpose => People => Process. In that order.

Purpose.

Much has been written about the importance of purpose to a team. Simon Sinek’s New York bestseller is prophetically entitled “Start with Why” and I couldn’t agree more. If a team of individuals don’t know why they do what they do, they’re not a team at all … they’re just a bunch of individuals moving through their day in exchange for dollars. People will exert some effort for money, but they will invest themselves in a purpose that they believe in. Purpose is the nidus around which teams form … and it takes time to attract and assemble those who believe in what you believe in … who resonate with your team’s purpose. Until then, you get some work from some people some of the time, but the moment they (those who have not bought to your team’s purpose) sense a “better deal”, they’re gone. That’s okay … they didn’t truly resonate with your team’s purpose, and it needs to happen before you can get to where your team is going. Our purpose is simple, we believe in the power of the collision between inspired learners, engaged educators and meaningful experiences … and we do everything we can each day to foster that collision. Simple, but not easy.

What is your team’s purpose? It must be more than “be profitable” … it must be something deeper, something guttural, it is your cause. Often your purpose is what follows when you say, “we believe in ______” … now fill in that blank. By starting with your purpose, you’ll be able to gather people seeking to invest themselves in such a purpose. You need a purpose to gather the right people … and you need the right people to help your team achieve its purpose.

People.

The greatest asset of any high-performance team is their people. It is certainly true of CSUVetCE. There are many highly talented people on this planet, but just like the Cinderella teams of the NCAA March Madness, I’ll take the high character people whose values resonate with ours and who are motivated and inspired to serve our purpose each and every time! The hot shot athlete recruit who is out to advance themselves rather than to advance their team toward its goals is of no interest to me or to small program coaches who find themselves

competing with the giants. Don’t get me wrong, the people of CSUVetCE are extremely talented, but they are oh-so-much more than that. The people of high performing teams like ours resonate with the team purpose and invest themselves in it. We’re like any other team; some of our wins are pretty and everything we put in the air seems to find the bottom of the net, but other of our outings are a struggle and we must fight and claw to achieve the outcomes we desire. Either way, we celebrate our team wins together and we give a helping hand up to our teammates when they are down and reach out their hand.

Purpose-driven teammates just seem to “get” the importance of their role on the team. We frequently talk about our offering a “CE Elevated” experience by looking at the educational process through the lens of those that we serve. Learning should be fun, engaging, relevant and connected, but one must ask “how do you achieve that goal?”. The answer, I suppose, is “through a thousand seemingly disconnected details each and every day”. There is no flow chart that can assemble all those details in the proper order each day, so much of it comes down to those “purpose-driven people” of your team who simply “get it” – they know why they are there. They know the goal and they invest themselves in it. There is a bit of a paradox in that we speak of our using the right person do the right job (“right person / right job” in our team vernacular) and yet we each also must be willing to do any job when the need calls for it. On a basketball team, you’ve got a point guard who is the essentially the “floor captain” (incidentally our team has those). The point guard directs the offense, but that point guard also must be willing to fill another gap when circumstances call for it. Just like in an athletic contest, circumstances are always changing in a dynamic workplace, and “healthy chatter” is required amongst the team to have it function at its optimum through each dynamic day (“need a little help over here … can you do XYZ, while I cover ABC … let’s go!”). Injuries take teammates out and healthy teams are filled with people willing to step up into that gap.

People who are allowed to bring their gifts, skills, and passions to serve the team purpose help the team to find others who can do the same. One of the amazing shifts that I’ve observed with our team is how I once did a lot of the talking about our purpose, our values and culture when recruiting new talent, but now that comes from our team (and it is 100% more impactful coming from them than it is from me!).

I’ve heard it said that “the numbers tell the story, but it is the people who write it”. The right people gathered to serve a purpose that they believe in will write a beautiful and inspiring story every time!

Process.

Our operation, like yours, is highly complex. There are LOTS of moving parts operating in a dynamic environment where many factors that come into play are out of your control. Finding efficiencies in such environments is no simple thing. I believe that much like purpose attracts the right people; the right people define, develop, drive, and refine the right process.

When your locker room is filled with the right players who are united around a common purpose, it only makes sense that they will have an almost supernatural ability to drive the right

processes. Those remarkable NCAA Cinderella teams know why they are there (purpose), they invest themselves fully (people), and they define, develop, direct, and refine methods (process) that allow them to collectively be their very best and perform at their optimum. Purpose drives people to develop processes that help them to deliver upon their purpose – it comes full circle!

So often team leaders and coaches find themselves micromanaging processes, when often it is great people united around a common purpose that are the best ones to define, develop, drive and refine those processes. David Marquet, author of Turn the Ship Around! – A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders and former captain of the USS Santa Fe, was able to move the Santa Fe from being the worst performing ship in the Navy to the best. How did he do it? … in his words, “You only need to do one thing to engage employees: give them decision-making authority. By treating people like leaders, you build more leaders”. He also notes that “Good leaders give orders, but great leaders don’t give any orders because they’ve built a team that doesn’t need to be told what to do”. Here’s a reminder to the leader role present in each of us: pay more attention to your purpose, and to your people, and watch as magical new efficient processes begin to unfold.

I can’t write about the 3P’s without being immensely proud of the CSUVetCE team. You are a purpose-driven team that makes “CE Elevated” happen each and every day. Your healthy team chatter inspires me when I watch you collectively turn the impossible into so much more than just possible. You are a joy to watch bring your amazing gifts, talents, and passions to our purpose. You embody what it is to invest yourselves in something that you believe in such that we are exponentially better together than we are alone. Lives all around the world are made better and fuller each day because of what you do.

So, pull up a chair my dear reader, watch a little of NCAA’s March Madness and look for the 3P’s in those highly performing teams. You’ll see it in their actions, and you’ll hear it in their winning post-game interviews. They’ll talk of their commitment to each other and playing for one another against all odds. They’ll credit their teammates and their coaches … and often their opponents. They’ve come along way together. Celebrate with them … and pause to think of what they can teach us all!

Ross’ career has spanned both private practice and academia. Along the way, he has been actively engaged in orthopedic training of veterinarians for more than 30 years. Ross is a professor Orthopedics at Colorado State University, Associate Director of Education at the Translational Medicine Institute and a frequent educator at orthopedic courses held here at CSUVetCE and around the world.  If you, too, believe that “what if … thinking” is the key to innovation and advancement beyond that status quo, please get to know us at www.CSUVetCE.com because nothing fuels our passion like rubbing elbows with those who are similarly driven.

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