TeamTrainers Turns Ten
In May of 2000, I received a gift for all the wrong reasons: more than a week off with pay, because a wildfire was threatening to burn down my workplace! I refer to the Cerro Grande Fire that destroyed 400 homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and melted a guardrail within sight of American’s only nuclear weapons “pit” facility. At the time I had been working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the atomic bomb, since 1993. Having completed three years as a project leader there, I was frustrated at the limitations of being a manager at a government facility. But I had learned something important about myself. It seemed I was pretty good at creating self-directed work teams, and it was very rewarding to see those teams take off.
One day I was watching TV coverage of the fire. A shot from a news helicopter showed heavy billowing smoke, which opened up briefly to reveal the main administration building. My office was next to that building. I decided it was time to pursue another job. So I spent the rest of my time off writing the business plan for what would become TeamTrainers™ Consulting.
I filed for a business license on June 5, 2000, ten years ago today, in Albuquerque. I chose the date in honor of my father, who would have been 79 that day had he not died when I was 10. The first order of business was finding out the truth about team building. I had taken a couple of seminars, read some books, and done a ropes-course retreat, and was skeptical based on my experiences. As an ex-reporter, I was used to digging for the real story, and had already reviewed something like 600 scientific sources on topics as diverse as romantic attraction, persuasive writing, and corporal punishment of children. For the next six months, I was in the libraries at the University of New Mexico one day a week doing research.
The result was my training manual, The SuddenTeams® Program. Currently it’s over 500 pages (not the book version) and I have nearly that many sources in my bibliography, not counting another 250-300 I reviewed but didn’t use. It covers every aspect of forming and leading a team from after the people have been selected until the team shuts down, including special challenges such as leading virtual teams, getting buy-in from unions, etc.
At this point I made a mistake. I now know the sales cycle for my type of service is 12 to 18 months. At the time, not seeing much sales movement after six months, I panicked and decided I needed a better market. Given its size and high-tech companies, and my friends there, Seattle seemed the logical choice. You could say I was following the Microsoft model, given that Bill and company started that company in Albuquerque and moved to the Seattle suburb of Redmond.
During my years in Seattle, I freely admit, TeamTrainers ranged from full-time activity to mostly dormant. It’s 10 with an asterisk, as they say about sports records. I am grateful to my ex-wife for pushing me to revive it at one point. I can say I taught at Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley, the City of Seattle, and the University of Washington-Bothell, among other places. Another mistake I made was promising clients confidentiality. My argument was that I was giving them a competitive advantage they didn’t want their competitors to know about. But it didn’t add to my sales, and it’s making things a little harder now because I can’t offer many references.
That birthday asterisk also applies to my time here in Raleigh, NC. I grew up here, lived elsewhere 25 years, and came back for family reasons in 2008. I took a year off from TeamTrainers after moving to Raleigh, deciding whether I really wanted to start this business for the third time given that I would mostly be marketing for a while. But the fun I have helping teams is worth the effort.
I have never wavered from the mission I chose from the start: “To improve people’s lives by spreading the benefits of true teaming as widely as possible.” That’s why I keep my hourly rate below the market average, so smaller companies and nonprofits can afford my services. My first gig here was at N.C. State University, and I am especially proud of pro bono work such as trainings for Hospice of Wake County and the N.C. Jaycees. Having seen the life-changing impact of real teamwork on workers and their managers, I wish I could get every team in America to adopt the best practices for teamwork according to science. But until they do, TeamTrainers will have many more birthdays.
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