Pivot – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

Adaptability and resilience in teams

This week a client told me, "You know what, Rodrigo, given everything we’re discussing, the strategy and the challenges ahead, what we need as a team next year is a lot of flexibility, the kind triathletes have when they switch from one sport to the next." It honestly blew me away. It was a great metaphor for resilience, or what she ended up calling "agility at the waist": the ability to think and act on future challenges with real flexibility. I’ll admit I’m hugely biased, since I love triathlon and compete in it, but it struck me as the perfect way to open this post.

Many teams feel alone and lost at some point during the year. Often they simply lack a clear north, a sense of where they’re headed. Out of inertia they get absorbed in the day to day, usually the daily running of operations. That’s perfectly fine, because operations are what pay the bills at many companies. But when a team loses its north, its ability to see the horizon clearly or at least make out its outline, the long term is no longer guaranteed, and the team runs a serious risk of disappearing.

Today teams have to be more resilient than ever. The demands and ways of working we’re living with require all of us to collaborate and, through that, to look at problems from many angles. Teams need to be clear, and even raise their hand to get clarity, about which sport we’re playing right now. Swimming? Cycling? Fencing? My client’s metaphor got me thinking: what about the teams or companies that sometimes find themselves in a pentathlon?

Accepting that change is part of daily life means understanding that working for an organization that aims to last more than 100 years demands all the flexibility and resilience we can muster. In fact, the long-term success of many organizations comes down to their capacity to adapt. The formula is no secret. Organizations that have made it from the first generation to the fifth, the sixth and beyond, through ups, downs and problems, got there because they understood that building a business is just like my client’s metaphor. It takes the mindset of an athlete who competes in several sports, and a high-performance athlete at that.

So my takeaway as I close this week and start the next is this: how willing am I to embrace the change, resilience and agility that my organization is asking of me, and that I already know next year will demand? Or better yet, that the future will demand?

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. Thank you to my client for the inspiration behind this post. I sincerely hope 2025 is your best year yet, for you, your loved ones and your great team.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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