Extreme Dreams Depend on Teams

Their accomplishments are hailed as amazing "individual" feats: Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Thomas Edison creating a thousand patented inventions. Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. Lance Armstrong winning seven straight Tours de France.

Yet all of these so-called individual feats were achieved through teamwork. Lindbergh, Edison, Michelangelo, and Armstrong were master team-builders who recruited people with diverse skills, talents, and temperaments. They reached "impossible" heights through teamwork.

If you want to achieve a grand vision. If you want to make "impossible" dreams comes true, then you need the power of teamwork. Extreme dreams really do depend on teams.

Publishers Weekly

Williams, senior v-p and cofounder of the Orlando Magic and former general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers and Chicago Bulls, offers a lackluster pep talk on the benefits of teamwork, reiterating that it can produce better results than individual efforts. He argues that the same principles that apply to team sports also apply to the corporate environment, government, the military, the religious world and families. Through dozens of anecdotes from his own life, he sings the praises of group effort, synergy and the African concept of ubuntu-"I am, because we are"-and describes how those principles can bolster entrepreneurial, creative and even global security-related ambitions. Too broad accolades to the virtues of passion, empowerment and character break up the anecdotal monotony, but as the author admits gleefully in the introduction, his enthusiasm leads to rampant overwriting-in this instance, a magazine article stretched to book-length by endless stories about professional basketball. (July)

Pat Williams is senior vice president of the Orlando Magic, an NBA team he cofounded in 1987. Pat has been involved in professional sports for forty-five years and has been affiliated with NBA teams in Chicago, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, including the 1983 World Champion Philadelphia 76ers. He is one of America's top motivational and inspirational speakers and the author of thirty-five books. Pat and his wife, Ruth, live in Winter Park, Florida. They have nineteen children, including fourteen adopted from four foreign countries, ranging in age from twenty-one through thirty-five.