A year after winning the women’s world cup, the US women’s soccer team were knocked out without a medal at the Olympics in Rio.
It was fascinating to hear Coach Jill Ellis reflect about the importance of that defeat. It galvanized her to remake the team. Yes, they had only been world champions a year ago. But, it was time to change. New players had to be brought into the setup and new tactics had to be tried.
It is a lesson that never gets old in professional sports. Great teams can dominate for 2-3 year periods. But, they often hit a wall after that. Everything that used to work just doesn’t seem to work as well anymore.
Great managers/coaches who manage to win while staying at the same place longer than 2-3 years become experts at evolving their teams.
It is an important lesson in our lives too. If we’ve had a good run doing what we’re doing for the past 12-18 months, it is probably time to think about where we want to go and what we need to do to remake ourselves.
What got us here won’t get us there.
