Enjoy the Company!

^{William and I enjoying one of the exercises from the ropes course during our 2017 MWF}

While the answer to the question of which is more important - the JOURNEY or the DESTINATION is fairly nuanced and not as easily answerable by the COMPANY as Arteta puts it in the video above, I personally like that response because understanding and helping to bring out the best in each other is a core component of what makes a great team, a great team.

There's a very common slang in Veteran football which says "Helep Team". My fellow veteran members @thegreens and @fomabe will know this very well. 🤣🤣🤣.

More often than not, you will hear someone shout at another "Massa helep team"... which will immediately be followed either by hysterical laughter by the rest of the teammates, or angry shouts in support of the statement - depending on the general emotions of that team at that particular instance. While it more often than not is blurted out as ridicule to someone who's not giving passes or scoring goals (helping the team), it is quite a loaded statement. "Helep team" could simply mean:

• move a little faster with the rest of the defense,
• pass the ball more,
• stop shouting at people, encourage someone else, etc.

I use this example because what many people (veterans included) fail to understand is that "Veteran" football is, by definition, played by people who are already too old to play professional football but love the game enough to use it to stay healthy, or people who don't know football enough to play professionally... and so, if you find yourself being annoyed (catching feelings) because a fellow veteran is not "playing well", do you see the irony in that? The most common result is that your team will start arguing and with that division, naturally comes failure.

Understanding the COMPANY you're in then means, understanding each person's stregnths and weaknesses, managing your expectations and your EMOTIONS, so that at every step of the game, you're finding ways to ENJOY the COMPANY on this JOURNEY you're all in so that when you get to your DESTINATION, you can all look at yourselves and say "WE DID THIS TOGETHER"... "We helped each other get here".

^{Photo by MART PRODUCTION on PEXELS}

This can also be directly seen in the world of business or Organisational development in how you manage the people you work with. While the tolerance level is MOST DEFINITELY not what you are forced to deal with in veteran environments, understanding the people you work with and finding ways to position and enable each other be the best we can be based on our strengths and weaknesses is definitely (or should be) a core part of your overall STRATEGY.

I will love to hear what you too think about this.