The Pursuit of Excellence: The Uncommon Behaviors of the World's Most Productive Achievers

by Ryan Hawk

A key part of the Indians’ learning organization culture is their monthly TEAMS calls. They invite a wide variety of leaders from both inside and outside the sporting world to participate in a large group Zoom call. There is one designated speaker to kick off the call, and it’s typically an author or thought leader on a specific topic. In the second half of the call, attendees go into breakout rooms where each person is asked to share their point of view about that topic. In the instructions email sent to every invitee prior to each call, Jay Hennessey states, “The speaker series is built around learning from our guest speaker and then cultivating dialogue amongst the group. We ask that those who attend are ready to engage and discuss with others during the session. If you are unable to actively engage, we ask that you wait to view the recording that we will send the following week. Thank you.” (The boldfacing is Jay’s.) They’ve learned that learning is done through dialogue. This comes from the work of Peter Senge in his book, The Fifth Discipline: “The discipline of team learning starts with ‘dialogue,’ the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine thinking together. To the Greeks, dia-logos meant a free flowing of meaning through a group, allowing the group to discover the insights not attainable individually.”