Practice.

An excerpt from Teamwork: The Team Member Handbook

It’s one thing to show up for work every day and do your job. Or to show up on game day and go against the competition. But it’s another thing to show up for practice. To drill. To rehearse. To run through your plays time after time, watching the people perform as a team and pushing for better performance.

Practice, so the saying goes, makes perfect. Maybe, maybe not. But you’ll notice that nobody offers any hope of perfection without it. Regular, disciplined practice gives your team performance gains it could never achieve by merely “doing the job” or “playing the game.”

Practice gives you a chance to work purely on performance, without having to worry about actual results at the same time. You can experiment . . . foul up . . . learn . . . make corrections . . . try again. People can work on new routines, try out in different positions, do things they could never afford to do if it were a “live” situation instead of just a practice session.

It takes practice to develop the team’s true potential. To develop that “edge” that lets you outperform the competition. To meet the challenge of tough, non-routine problems that might pop up.

Consider this: The true professionals never stop practicing. Neither should you and your teammates. 

“On one simulation we had 20 simultaneous failures. The worst one was a cooling failure that screwed up the computers. We solved it. When you know the rules, what to do when a failure occurs, you get a great deal of satisfaction if everyone’s clicking, if you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. When the simulation control guys are throwing failure after failure at you, you get a high degree of satisfaction from solving the problems. But that’s just practice. You get your real satisfaction when you play a mission, practice it, fly the mission, and safely land it.”

“Practicing” at the National space and Aeronautics Administration in Houston, Texas, means conducting scores of computerized test flights in advance of actual missions. Flight simulator control specialists build into the practice sessions as many potential failures as can be imagined. So, when the actual mission takes place, flight control team members know what to expect. Performing well under duress produces personal satisfaction, as well as successful teamwork, says NASA flight director trainee Richard Jackson, a Houston native and engineering graduate of Texas A&M University.