The Oracle Ethical Debacle at the America’s Cup

Team Oracle may or may not win the America’s Cup. While the cup itself is a billionaire’s bauble, Oracle’s approach represents a perfect corruption of the competitive ideal. Larry Ellison, the world’s fifth richest man, has pursued this bauble for a generation. His boat finally won it in 2010 in a race with no design rules. The superior technology won. He then rewrote the rules to minimize the number of competitors; cheated on his own rules, then complained about the rules. This approach represents the pure distillation of arrogance, wealth and competitive disdain for rules where winning is all that matters.

I know nothing about sailing except for hanging over the side trying to avoid puking for two hours the last time I tried. Every several years I do follow the America’s cup. The America’s Cup used to be a bumptious competition among millionaires sailing to win the “world’s oldest trophy” (sic). An oddity of the cup, the winner could write the rules for the next competition including specifying the dimensions of the boats and choosing the place.

Despite its rhetoric, the competition has never been genteel or nice. Millionaires let alone billionaires are seldom genteel or nice. The cutthroat wealthy litigated, fought, pushed boundaries, got penalties and fought for advantage from hiding keel innovations to new hull materials. The competition, however, remained on a relatively level and specified field with boat specifications.

While Ellison and his arrogance and money pushed it into the twenty first century with technology innovations, the cup degenerated into an ugly morass of international litigation among giant corporations. In 2010 a special sail off with no rules, lead to Oracle finally winning on the basis of running differing technologies against each other. The superiortechnology with no rules lead to the victory.

Oracle got to rewrite the rules of competition and choose the venue. It did so with a vengeance including outlawing appeals of governing board decisions and prohibiting anyone who litigated in court from competing. This was designed to avoid the morass that singed its winning competition.

He mandated a new class of cutting edge boat called anew class of super boats called AC72 catamarans—boats welded carbon fiber and airplane technology to sailing. This set minimum design specifications upon size and style and places some thing like a level playing field. It also pushed the design and technology to its furthestboundaries.   

The competition should then reduce to sophisticated and fine-grained tweaks. It would have some thing to do skill, training, integrated teamwork and reading the wind and course rather than technological superiority.

The boats are stunningly beautiful and fly across the waves at 40 plus knots. The boats are essentially flying wings with 13 story advanced fiber-carbon technology airplane wings as the main sail. They are majestic and stunning to watch and incredibly fragile and hard to sail. At least they created a “category” within which groups can tweak and build boats unlike Oracle’s sham victory in 2010.

Having defiled the concept of competition last time, Oracle proceeded to ruin any credibility it had as a team and culture as thoroughly as Lance Armstrong did for biking. Let’s follow this.

1.    They turned a millionaires sport into a multi-billionaire’s sport or corporate—much like what formula one racing has become. This year only five groups could even think about building boats to compete. The boats cost 100 million plus dollars. Along with Prada and the Artemis syndicate; the best competitor turned out to be Emirates New Zealand.

2.   Last year Oracle was caught cheating by spying on Emirates in New Zealand. Nothing unusual here, just regular cut throat cheating in a billionaire’s game. But having rewritten the rules, Oracle would not even abide by them. 

3.   After cheating once, Oracle cheated again when they overloaded the weighting in the World Cup races where 45-foot catamarans raced. These boats were regulated by exact specifications raced to test skill and train, not just reward technology. They were also serving as prototypes for the America’s Cup boats.

4.   The team and leaders denied all knowledge of the overweighting and cheating. To be clear, no one believes them. This is a team noted for its maniacal control and culture. Everything is controlled from top down and nothing goes unnoticed. 

5.   After cheating twice and then getting caught, Oracle paid a pittance of a fine of 670,000 dollars. But they also were penalized two races in the America’s Cup competition and started -2 races. They complained when they could not appeal; after they had rewritten the rules to no one could appeal decisions.

6.   This culture of cheating leads to an odd forms of pouting and utterly lack of loyalty. In the very first race, having proven their disdain for rules, the Oracle boat bleeped violation charges against Emirates four times in the first several minutes of the first race!  This tells you about the attitude of the crew and leadership obsessed with rules they have already broken.

7.   After falling behind in races, the boat jettisoned its navigator and ran out to hire a world famous navigator, probably the best money can buy demonstrating, not only do rules not matter when winning is all that counts but neither do people.

The Oracle team epitomizes a culture that values winning over everything. It even ignored the reality in 2010 that winning itself is defined by rules. They have assumed technology could defy or at least transcend rules. They illustrate how wealth facing sport unbound by competitive rules that level the playing field, turn competition into farce.

Oracle prefers a world without rules. Denied that, it prefers a world where they write the rules. Even given that they prefer to cheat on the rules they have written. Whatever aspirations Oracle have to some pseudo-samurai worldview that Ellison preaches, team Oracle has missed the fundamental point—a samurai lives by a code. Winning matters, but winning with honor matters more.

Oracle in the America’s cup demonstrates what happens when winning is all that matters.

Oracle may win; but it deserves to lose.

Will Athletes Finally Reject Code of Silence?

Major League Baseball’s suspension of 12 players for using performance enhancing drugs reminds us again that a Code of Silence among athletes protect and abets illegal and unfair drug usage. Players in clubhouses generally knew who cheats; but everyone keeps silent.

 Fellow athletes know that using performance-enhancing drugs is illegal; they know users put the rest of them at a disadvantage in competition; they know using stops other younger players from playing; they know these enhanced players denigrate the game’s integrity. They know it is wrong, but they remain silent. Their silence undermines integrity as they collaborate in the cheating and scandals.

 

Until this Code of Silence dies, this cheating and unfair advantage will continue.

Let’s be honest. In the search for advantage in a brutal and competitive landscape, some players will cheat. This happens in any profession in a competitive world with real stakes. Every profession, sports included, has to self-regulate to limit the cheating and advantages that accrue to the cheaters.

The two ways to discourage cheating involve:

1)   Change the risk/reward calculation of the person tempted to cheat. The equation balances the probability of getting caught and the projected severity of the punishment against the gain in production, salary and longevity. 

2)   Change the culture of support or silence among teammates and fellow professional. If this culture is a “no snitch culture, athletes will not report and tolerate the use of performance enhancing technologies. When fellow professionals do not speak up, this makes hiding it easier and tilts the risk/reward calculus towards using.

Any sport seeking to discourage performance-enhancing technologies must have a rigorous, comprehensive and up to date testing system. To be accepted it requires due process to protect athlete rights, and serious and consistent penalties that players will accept as fair. This is a hard and requires evolving techniques to deal with the stealth and technologies of the cheaters. Strong programs need the support of professionals, in this case, athletes, to ensure wide compliance, a culture that supports it and avoids litigation.

This is where so many sports failed. The hostility between athletes and owners or regulating bodies generates a we versus them approach. Teammates band together against the “other.” This we/they intensifies the natural dynamic of any team to band together to support each other. The protective bonding grows from athletes’ desire to protect each other’s private life from the prying and reckless inquiries of the media.

This hostility is deepened in union policy and a history of owners who have colluded against players in baseball. The hostility of unions to strong drug testing programs reflected this distrust and the players’ legitimate fear that owners would misuse the testing to target them. Only in the last seven years have unions and management comes together to agree on stronger protocols, confidentiality protections and appeal processes. Both sides recognized that the credibility of the game itself had come under attack. But the Code remained intact and almost all the discovery of cheaters occurred with testing or investigations, none involved peers reporting users.

Leaving aside the travesty of modern cycling and the bankruptcy of sprints with its Ben Johnson’s and Marian Jones, no major sport has been so afflicted by performance-enhancing technologies as baseball. An entire era and all the accomplishments of that time are contaminated by wide use. This usage was common knowledge among other players, but everyone remained silent and collaborated in the era’s dishonesty; everyone but the reviled Jose Conseco. As Curt Schilling pointed out his accusations turned out to be accurate.

This Code of Silence can nullify strong testing programs. The testing programs need players to reject the Code. The Code of Silence among professionals reflects shared values and keeping each other’s back. It reflects everyone’s awareness that no one is pure and that the media will tear careers apart on the slightest excuse. It may even reflect an awareness that players feel they are benefitting from having the cheaters on their team at the moment or the fear that at some point in the future a player might want to use PEDs to augment their own declining career.

In many ways, however, modern professional sports do not have teams in the traditional sense. Teams turnover occurs every three to four years. Players are regularly cut, traded or sent to the minor leagues. During the course of a year, a baseball team can have a thirty percent turn over. The Code of Silence has its most power on teams, but has been embraced by the entire profession as players move so often now. This extension to the entire league makes even less moral sense because once you are on another team, the player you know who cheats will hurt you by his enhanced performance.

This Code possesses great moral weight as a “no snitch” rule among players. However, it strikes poses serious moral threats to the game itself and to players’ own integrity and career chances. Use of performance-enhancing technologies violates the integrity of the game, violates the integrity of the players who remain silent and collaborate in its use. The Code permits use and this hurts the silent players by shielding athletes who as opponents will have a decided advantage over honest players who do not use.

The Code’s power is impressive because players hurt their self-interest and violate their own commitment to the game’s integrity by remaining silence. The no snitch rule, us against them, and having each other’s back all push athletes to remain silent or “live and let live.” The problem here is that this is not live and let live.

Letting live means letting users prey on other players, including you. It harms all honest players. It also harms the future of the league because scouts cannot accurately assess talent if minor leaguers are using performance enhancers.

Silence and protecting performance enhancing users denies younger players a chance to get into games. It also keeps younger players who deserve a chance in the minors when enhanced athletes stay in the major leagues by virtue of enhanced performance. Silence indulges users. This behavior is wrong and hurts people. It is not live and let live.

Finally enhanced athletes as teammates and friends because they must lie all the time. PED users lie to fans and carve out performance records that are lies. But they also lie to themselves. We know from psychology that anyone who tells him or she a narrative long enough can come to believe it to be true. Self-deceivers lose their identity and live a lie given how much time they spend lying to themselves. Marion Jones, Ben Johnson, Alex Rodriquez, Mark MacGwire all could probably pass lie detector test because they had convinced themselves of the truth of their charade.

I hope that the cracks in the code are widening with the last round of exposures. The deceit of Ryan Braun is especially important. Braun is a widely liked and marketed star. He had publically apologized and swore to fans, teammates and owners that he was not enhancing his performance. He swore to athletes who regarded themselves as his friend and protector like Aaron Rodgers the quarterback of the Packers who claimed he would bet one year of his salary on Braun being clean.

Players, coaches and owners feel betrayed at a very personal level by Braun’s actions. The lies of 12 other players compounds and ripples across the major leagues. The deceit required poisons team cohesion and friendships. It also taints the achievement of every honest star that might fight the perception he or she is using.

If the Code is broken it can occur in three ways:

1. Some players will whistle blow quietly but effectively. One of the issues that has hurt all investigations is the militant silence of the players towards other players on these issues. This needs to end.
2. Players need to shun and shame the abusers and enhancers. This will take effort in the locker rooms and in union meetings and in discussions. Peer pressure can discourage would be users and at least ensure that past users can’t just pretend it never happened and return to normal. Peer pressure and force can be as powerful as occasional whistle blowing.
3. The most powerful change in player attitude can play out with strong union support for permitting contracts to be broken and renegotiated with abusers. The union could also negotiate two strike rules against athletes who get caught a second time; this avoids the false positive issues. Both these approaches will take real constraints upon the owners who players fear will use drug issues to abort bad or foolish long-term contracts. But a change in player attitudes can play out with changed and harsher penalties in the contracts.      

Up to this point fellow athletes have sacrificed their own integrity and their own career prospects by abiding by a Code of Silence to protect cheaters and enhancers. This silence helps keep young players on the bench and in the minor. It disadvantages every player who must play against the performance enhancers. It makes the game a joke to those who love it and play it. It is time for players to reject the code and whistle blow, ostracize the users and push to change the penalties.

The Sandusky Verdict and the Limits of Team Culture

The guilty verdict on Jerry Sandusky for 45 counts of child abuse confirms what we all knew. It also confirms Sandusky’s invincible denial and rationalizations that matches the patterns of most abusers. But Sandusky’s now legally established guilt only reinforces the institutional moral lessons about how dangerous team culture can be to moral integrity.

High achievement in professional fields including sports usually requires successful teams. Sports teams exemplify this reality but it lives in any team at any level of public or private sector. It ranges from the immensity of the Manhattan Project to snow removal. Yet, as Sandusky’s case shows, the dynamics of high achieving teams can lead teams to deny, tolerate or hide immense moral evil in the name of the team.

First, every team produces imbedded authority. At the simplest level members internalize values and commitments to each other. This commitment to each other reinforces and circles back on a commitment to achieve a common purpose. Team members self-censor and do not violate team norms.

Second, internalizing norms proceeds hand in hand with deferring to authority and leaders. Successful sports teams understand that execution depends upon deference to coaches, who recruit team members, socialize them and can cut them for not meeting expectations. In college and high school, the power of coaches to determine the moral and behavioral expectations of players is immense. This is reinforced by the player’s commitments to a common goal.

Teams commit to a mission. This does not require committing to each other, but grows into this on the field and practice. Goal commitment obliges players to get along in practice, the locker room and on the field.

Teammates learn as a matter of course to “live with” the idiosyncrasies and even grossness of other players or coaches. Everyone has idiosyncrasies from the way their sweat smells or how they fart to their behavior off field or dating habits. Players and teammates school themselves to get along with this. They may make jokes about it, but they stuff it for the mission of winning.

These differences can be obvious like race, ethnicity or geography or very personal. It might involve player’s life off field and how they treat partners or their gender preferences. Fellow players will tolerate or simply ignore differences and problems with players who may be jerks or violent or assholes as long as it does not enter the locker room or impact performance. Teammates shrug, “it’s just Manny being Manny,” but they often will not socialize with the idiots.

This goes doubly for coaches and authority figures. The coaches may scream, yell and even abuse players, but they possess huge authority and often grudging respect if they “know their shit.” 

School or club coaches often turn teams into almost family units with care and attention lavished on their players. In college many players were recruited and courted by a coach as well as and developed by a coach.  Even then, on the road players can see coaches misbehaving sometimes, either drinking, womanizing or violating team norms. They may dislike it and resent it, but they will put up with it and keep it silent for the team.

In these tight knit groups, peer authority and identity can be so strong that people can literally miss what they see or reinterpret what they see. Social psychology research is replete with cases where individuals will stifle their own moral initiative under peer pressure or literally realign what they saw to bring into line their perceptions with their beliefs.

This is how Sandusky could get away with his abuse for so long. His actions may seem weird and strange, but if it happens enough, it normalizes his deviance. So bringing along teenage “guests” to practice or road games where the “guests” sleep in his room becomes just “Jerry being Jerry.”

It took a lot of moral courage, maybe all he had, for Mike McQueary to acknowledge to himself that he really did see the coach who recruited and trained him and worked with him raping a young boy in the shower. I imagine his whole body and mind screamed to deny or reinterpret whatever he saw.

But McQueary did see it and fought the temptation to ignore or reinterpret it. He reported it to his revered coach, Joe Paterno, a man who could have ended it all in a microsecond if he had listened or acted. Mike McQueary may not have done enough but he did what most team members cannot do. He reported evil; he snitched; he had the level of self-honesty to see the truth. His testimony at the trial provided independent adult corroboration for the sordid remembrances of the young men who had to dredge up painful and conflicted memories of Sandusky’s embraces.

Penn State is desperately working to eliminate the scandal and rewrite history. The stadium will not be renamed after Paterno, not for lack of trying. The school is tenderly approaching the victims about settlements. They painted out Jerry Sandusky from the famous mural with Penn State players and coaches, rather like 1984. Now they have replaced the blanked out portrait of Sandusky with a leader in the fight against child abuse.

But rewriting history will not be enough here. If new CNN reports are accurate, then the athletic Director Mike Curry and the Vice President Gary Shultz actually planned to report the incident as required by law. But a discussion with Paterno changed the Vice President’s mind. According to CNN, his email stated, he decided to talk to Sandusky and limit his access. "This is a more humane and upfront way to handle this.” They essentially did nothing. Sandusky continued to use Penn State facilities, continued to be free to abuse and continued to use his Penn State status to legitimize his cultivation and grooming of young victims.

One final point, most teams develop a no snitch rule. Not snitching lies deep in any committed group identity; it exists as strongly as “I’ve got your back.” No snitching makes perfect sense because team members do not want to reveal the strategies, skills or training that give a team its identity and strengths. Not snitching prevents opponents from knowing a team’s weaknesses or fissures.

I have watched investigations of teams where a fight had occurred at a party and thirty team members saw the fight. Some tried to break it up, others urged people on, but under investigation no one saw it and no one would reveal a word about not only about who started it but also who fought, period. A wall of denial faced team and department leaders trying to figure it out.  Teams stand together even to hide the bad.

Combine no snitch with the denial and culture of living with the gross stuff, and Sandusky’s actions reveal writ large the horrible mutations that the good of teams can produce.

Sports Ethics: Keep Cool

A paradox lies at the heart of all athletic judgment. To succeed requires passion and commitment, but achievement also demands cool judgment under immense pressure. In the heat of athletic competition especially in a contact sport, opponents will strive to deceive or intimidate or push or shove an athlete to throw him or her off their game. Coaches will even calling a time out to “ice” an opponent’s penalty shot aims at that end. Opponents try to “get inside your head” and distort an athlete’s judgment.

Mind games, physical intimidation, teasing, trash talk, pushing and shoving have one aim, to jumble an athlete’s fine tuned pattern recognition and judgment. The heat of competition disrupts the cool of judgment.

The capacity to channel passion and intensity into refined perception and quality judgment is the hallmark of any successful professional and especially athletes. The stress of endless competition within a person’s teams and against other opponents magnifies this.

The need to keep your cool stands in marked contrast the emphasis upon honing physical skill. Cognitive discipline, energy and time must be devoted to master the physical aspects. The excitement, however, of competing presses upon this cognitive control of the body.

Cool means excercising trained perception and judgment under chaotic conditions. In “the mind’s eye” reminds us how powerfully visual humans are; almost 70 percent of our perceptual energy is devoted to vision. In his or her mind’s eye athletes and professionals call up trained knowledge and assessments. They see, assess and judge; sometimes the judgments are so honed that they look like reactions or intuitions, but are really trained exercises of experienced judgment.

A firefighter, social worker, doctor or athlete all have the same obligation to think and act professionally under pressure. This means relying upon the trained intuition and a schema of knowledge and reaction that they have trained to engrave in their minds and bodies.

I use the word obligation because in team sports or activities, team members rely upon an individual to keep cool. Team members execute their own charges while assuming their teammates will do the same. If one person fails, the entire scheme falls apart.

Court leaders like setters, quarterbacks, catchers, middles or point guards demonstrate this best when they read unfolding situations and call plays. Players must recognize deceptions and traps. All the team members play off and coordinate with each other even when a broken play occurs. This built up trust and mutual understanding permits decision makers to make something from nothing.

This can only occur if players are paying attention to the play and to each other. It only can occur if their minds are fully integrated with flow and demands of a situation. An angry player misses cues or gets even or makes mistakes or commits fouls. A player replaying a mistake or the last play will not be crisp in the present play. When athletes “lose it” they start a cascade effect on their team and offer opportunities to opponents.

Keeping your cool may be natural for some phlegmatic types but most athletes and professionals have to learn it the hard way. When a player arrives at a professional self-discipline, they arrive at much higher levels of consistent achievement and help all players around them be better. Being professional means being mature and keeping one’s cool enables players to trust and react with confidence in each other’s consistency.

To keep your cool is central to athletic ethics and success. I think this is why I find the hockey enforcer so profoundly wrong. Designating a player to lose their cool, attack and try to hurt others violates any moral defense of sports as a worthy activity. The bounty hunting in the NFL violates the same moral code. To make uncontrollable and unpredictable violence a required part of an athlete’s job stabs at the heart of sport ethics and human achievement. The ugliness of the modern American hockey game as well as the psychological and physical cost to the so called “enforcers” speaks for itself.

Keeping cool is at the center of high quality execution, performance and team cohesion. This reality reminds me of a hoary old truth from Rudyard Kipling’s IF.

IF you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too…

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same…

You can be an athlete.

Handling Success Harder than Handling Adversity

One of the wisest coaches I know, Lorenzo Romar, was asked during one of his team’s nerve-racking midseason turnarounds, “which is harder to handle adversity or success?” Lorenzo laughed and replied “well when you are drowning, most of us will fight to say alive. It’s deep within us to struggle to survive. But it is way too easy to get complacent or take your press clippings seriously. Handling success is harder.”

Lorenzo hits on a powerful reality of life. Jim Collins in his superb book Good to Great argues that the good can be the enemy of the great. Organizations get good enough to succeed in their market. Too often they plateau at that point. They are doing well, very well, but they do not become great. Paradoxically their very success saps their motive to become great.

I believe Romar’s insight captures well the motivation of teams. When a team is down or struggling, they hate it. They want to get better. A team can respond with a chip on their shoulders. They have something to prove each game, and coaches can exploit this underdog, upset-minded, prove yourself approach. No one enjoys feeling bad or failing, so coaches can exploit the desire to prove themselves better.

Competition signals very clearly when a team fails. Losing confirms that a team needs to get better if they don’t want to lose again. Continuous losing can erode a team’s confidence in itself or its coach. It leaves no doubt a team failed. It leaves do doubt that a team and players must work harder to get better.

Winning poses a very different problem. Winning reassures everyone that they are doing the right thing. The media reinforces this with praising coverage and feel good stories. The paradox of winning is that it proves what you are doing works.

Incessant improvement is hard. Looking yourself in the mirror each day and realizing you need to continue to work harder than anyone and never being satisfied is hard. Having a coach dog you to get better and constantly demand effort and improvement in small things like footwork, ball handling, position, reading defenses, is hard. It feels good to revel in your success and how good you are.

The danger in victories lies in getting complacent. It leads players to become comfortable in what they are doing. They expect to win, which can be a good thing. You want teams to be confident and even have some swagger. If confidence bcomes arrogance and leads to cocky taunting and resentful learning, a team overestimates itself or under estimate its opponents, then it can be disastrous for a player or team.

1.   This attitude ignores the fact that every other team is working harder. In conference play where teams play multiple times, the beaten teams target the team that beat them. Winning teams become targets, so at the very time it might become complacent, other teams are working harder, nursing chips on their shoulders, plotting upsets and innovating to counter a winning team’s strengths
2. Winning can take the edge of a player or team. When players are hungry to win, they work harder. They enter each game on an edge pushing and fighting. They play at the edge of their talent and their emotions. Winning can erode that edge because a player gets comfortable doing what they do. They believe their present or past effort is enough, and that they can call it up as needed. Each game does not become a challenge or require the dynamic self-motivation of pushing oneself to one’s best or pushing boundaries.
3.   Winning can harm learning. Coaches can tear their hair out, if they have any left, when players begin to think they know better. Coaches need teams to adapt to each team and listen to the scout. They need the team to focus upon the keys to winning and make special efforts to push their strengths or stop the other team’s tendencies. Each game requires learning and anticipation. The problem arises when players misdiagnose why they are winning. Success lures players to believe they are winning simply because they are really good, not because they work harder and study harder and practice harder.
4.   Winning leads to a sense of entitlement. Winning tempts players to believe all they have to do is show up. Players begin to think they deserve to win. They not only expect to win, they expect it to be handed to them. Other teams and the referees are supposed to know how good they are. They make a run or get a lead, and this should prove to the other team it is time to give up. When referees go against them, they express outsize anger, even outrage, because as winners they should not have to deal with such things as fouls or bad calls. Modern players have enough issues with entitlement and winning just compounds it. This reinforces the learning lapses.

The need to counteract these tendencies accounts for some of the mad hatter behavior of college coaches. Professional teams seldom fall prey to complacency, but 18-21 year olds succumb much easier. They have less experience, judge on much smaller samples and have lived an entitled life for along time.

Collins talks about the need for a “ferocious” approach to greatness and the need to face brutal facts and incessantly learn. To counteract the attractions of success, coaches try to demand, cajole, or terrify teams into keeping an edge. Coaches have to remind teams that anyone can beat them if they do not “show up” in the full sense of bringing their focus, talent and skill honed to its highest level. More than a few coaches handle this with relentless schedules that demand teams respond. A loss now and then can keep teams receptive to learning. Modern power ratings now reward rather than penalize this in most sports and seedings.

The best coaches lay out clear metrics that enable players to see, measure and understand their progress. The metrics define goals that focus behavior and permit players to grow incrementally and see their growth and success. The metric driven approach to coaching reaffirms success but reminds players in a clear way that they can and must always get better. Nothing stands still in life and athletics. The best response remains appreciating one’s strengths but never giving up on getting better.

I think coach Romar is right.

Ironic isn’t it that success breed failure? While Kipling reminded us they can both be "impostors," endless failure can break us. Success in any area of life can generate arrogance combined with complacency--jerk in simple terms. A great  team and leader see hrough the illusions of success to the core demands of excellence and realize the path of personal and professional growth never ends, never stops.

 The journey, not the destination.