“The answer is stop concentrating on success. Instead, focus your team on deserving success. It sounds like a semantic change, but it’s far more than that.

Shifting your focus to deserving – the sale, the account, the client’s agreement, the budget increase – means you are now talking about (and rewarding) excellence. Winning is entirely out of your control: a team can do literally everything right and still have the ball bounce the wrong way. Deserving success is completely controllable. It’s about preparation, work ethic, genuine empathy for the customer, diligence and grit. Deserving success means focusing on process and standards – on how (and how consistently) you play the game.”