My highschool football coach worked hard to develop a strong passing game in our team.
He’d often say, “The ball travels faster than the player.” And it’s a phrase that has stuck with me because it’s a great metaphor for how other teams should work too.
Even if you have people on the team that are individually brilliant, they can rarely take the ball past all eleven players on the other team and score a solo goal. They almost always need to rely on multiple of their team members. In fact, the most efficient and effective path to goal is passing, trusting, and collaborating.
The absence of the ball at our feet isn’t a failure if we’ve given the ball to another open player further up the field, and if we’re putting ourselves back in an open position to advance our team’s game.
And when the team get comfortable with the passing game, they can see immediately that the ball always travels faster than even the best players.