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What the Blue Jays taught us about a high-performing team culture (Part 3 of 3)

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Fans move on but high-performing teams don’t. The off-season is where championships are shaped. Not by playing more games, but by deciding what carries forward and what gets left behind. It’s a deliberate pause to reflect, adapt, and evolve before the next season begins. For delivery teams, December plays the same role. It’s a chance to convert lessons into lasting habits, strengthen resilience, and enter the new year with intention instead of momentum hangover. I’m especially grateful I got to witness part of this story in person. I was in the stadium for the Blue Jays’ final game against the New York Yankees as they closed out the American League Division Series and advanced. Being there, you could feel it: the trust, the composure, the belief. Not just from the players, but from the entire organization.  It wasn’t just a win. It was a statement. And it reinforced something I’ve been writing about throughout this series, high-performing teams don’t rise to the moment, they rely ...
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What the Blue Jays taught us about a high-performing team culture (Part 2 of 3)

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It’s December now. The baseball season is over. The emotions have settled. This is the moment great teams use to reflect and not reset blindly.  Looking back on the Blue Jays’ World Series run, one truth stands out: talent got them far, but systems got them that far. What separated this team wasn’t star power, it was how effectively individual strengths were aligned, coordinated, and converted into execution. High-performing teams don’t rely on heroic effort. They build an environment that allow people to succeed together under pressure. In this second part of the series, we step back from the scoreboard and examine how the Jays transformed raw talent into cohesive performance and why this is where many delivery teams may unknowingly stall. High-performing teams shift from “Positions” to “Purpose” Baseball defines positions clearly, pitcher, catcher, shortstop but what elevates teams like the Jays is that every player understands their purpose within the inning, within the game...
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What the Blue Jays taught us about a high-performing team culture (Part 1 of 3)

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What were you doing Saturday night? I was watching the Blue Jays play in the World Series at Pearson airport.  I am still in shock but it got me thinking, there’s something deeply important worth paying attention to: Great teams reveal their behaviours long before the scoreboard does. And that’s why the Blue Jays are such a powerful example of what a high-performing team looks like. In this three-part series, we’ll unpack how this year’s Jays demonstrated the same principles that drive elite delivery teams: clarity, cohesion, accountability, adaptability, and continuous improvement. High-performing teams build culture on purpose You can’t fake culture, you can’t buy it and you cannot “announce” it. You earn your culture through shared identity, consistent behaviours and accountability to something bigger than yourself.  This season’s Blue Jays were defined by chemistry, not just talent. From dugout energy to post-game conversations, you could see their team dynamics and the...
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No more transactions: how do we build an environment for growth?

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If the transactional model is a dead end 🔗, what's the alternative? It’s about creating an environment where teams are empowered to own their work and are given the safety and space to improve it. It's about shifting their focus from "how fast can we close this ticket?" to "how can we deliver the most value?". This doesn't happen by accident. It requires a deliberate shift in how leaders lead and how teams are structured. From assignments to ownership The first step is to stop treating teams like ticket-takers and start treating them like owners. Instead of assigning individual tasks, give a team full responsibility for a product, a service, or a specific customer outcome . When a team owns something, their perspective changes completely. They are no longer just fixing a bug; they are improving their product. They benefit directly from their own improvements: less rework, fewer emergencies, and happier users. This is the essence of a team-centric view,...
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The improvement killer: why your team isn't getting better

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Imagine two kitchens. In the first, a short-order cook stands over a hot grill. Tickets stream in: "Two eggs over easy!" "Burger, no onions!" "Pancakes, side of bacon!" The cook's entire world is the next ticket. Success is measured in seconds: how fast can an order be flipped, plated, and sent out? There's no time to think about a better way to organize the station, a more efficient way to prep ingredients, or a new recipe. The goal isn't to become a better cook, it's just to survive the lunch rush. In the second kitchen, a chef and her team are responsible for a seasonal menu. They have a clear objective: create an amazing dining experience. While they handle orders every night, they also spend time discussing what worked and what didn't. They experiment with new techniques, source better ingredients, and refine their plating. They own the entire process, from concept to execution. Their goal isn't just to get food out; it's t...
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Agents: Shifting from How to What

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Sometimes, the greatest insights come from the least expected places. I recently attended an AI event that, yes, had a bit of a quirky, superhero theme . It wasn't my usual style, but the content was a game-changer. It gave me a deep, practical understanding of what AI agents can truly do. This event didn't just teach us about a new tool; it showed us a fundamentally new way of thinking. What does the agent need? For years, when building software, our main focus was the how . We spent all our energy defining the precise steps: how to write the workflow, how to program the logic, how to follow the process. With agents, that question flips completely. Our focus shifts to: What data do we need to provide so that the agent can do it? This is a massive change and similar to how we manage teams. We stop obsessing over the exact instructions and start obsessing over the quality of the context . We stop being process engineers and start being data engineers . We trust the agent to ...
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How to get 25% more done

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 Did you know that improving your productivity by 25% means you gain two additional working hours a day, three extra months a year or a free additional team member for a team of four. It's not about working more, it's about getting more done. 25% might just be the amount of extra capacity you need to finally clean up that document you keep getting annoyed by or implement that feature that never seems to make it into the planning. 25% is the equivalent of that extra team member you always wanted but could never fit in the budget. How is that possible? Imagine that every day, you spend  30 seconds  less than the day before to complete a similar amount of work. That gives you 30 seconds extra to spend on something else. I realize that 30 seconds is not a lot and won't let you complete anything substantial. However, those 30 seconds on a daily basis will accumulate over the course of a year to 25% of every working day. Nothing is for free You might have already noticed t...
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