Team Playing & Looking Good on Paper

Pat Guillick ,adviser to the Philadelphia Phillies, recently said that the 2011 Phillies are a better team ON PAPER than his 2001 Seattle Mariners that won 116 games. Plans can look good on paper, but they need to be executed well by  the team to be effective and successful.

The recent Phillies teams have had success because they played well as a team; one person picking up when another player was struggling. They were a team that enjoyed being together, played hard, and had fun too. They also had a leader, manager, that they respected.

Your team in the church or at work can have ‘star’ players or persons with great ability, but if they do not work well together as team, the results can be less than effective and successful. Tom Rainer and Eric Geiger in their book “Simple Church” noted that  large churches that had ‘star’ staff members , but who were not a unified team behind a clear purpose,  ultimately did not do well in the long run.

An old saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. But you if your team is not united, does not work together toward a common purpose and execute the plan, then the  plan only ‘looks good’ on paper.