Team Culture – How the Ryder Cup was won

Posted 6 years ago

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to witness the masterclass that was the European victory on French soil. The course was fantastic, weather brilliant and more importantly, the atmosphere was second to none. Le Golf National really did provide a weekend that I won’t forget for an awfully long time.

There was one key theme throughout the week which ended up being the difference between the two teams. The importance of team culture to maintain and achieve a key goal. In this case, it was a gold trophy, but with the Europeans coming in with the slightly worse team on paper it seemed like a mismatch, however, the scores at the end of the weekend indicated the complete opposite. So what happened? The average ranking for the USA team was 11 in the world with Europe weighing at 19 in the world across the two teams of 12.

In steps Thomas Bjorn. How did he do it? I don’t know for sure, but from the outside in he left egos at the door and created one joint goal for the whole team to aim at. That being a chance at history. He used the close bonds between the team (Molliwood the biggest example) grew them stronger and made them believe that ‘Team Europe’ was bigger than any one single player. One person can be strong, but never as strong as 12 together.

Then take the USA team, full of egos and big characters that simply didn’t gel but despite them having the #1 golfer in the world and arguably the greatest golfer to ever play the game in their midst, they were completely outclassed. The post-match interview indicated that there were clear divides in the team and the USA team captain, Jim Furyk didn’t quite get the team all working together.

Within most teams, it is easy to just look at figures and stats. But if you don’t get all your staff members working toward the same goal and believing in the core values the business holds, then you won’t maximise your key goals.

Creating a culture isn’t just letting people go home early on a Friday, a ping-pong table and a few beverages now and again. It is about engaging people with the overall business and what it believes in. The USA were all playing for themselves, ‘Molliwood’ and co all played for the Ryder Cup and Team Europe.

How have iHasco created a team culture?

Whilst we do sometimes let people go home early on a Friday, have an office ping-pong table and occasionally crack open a few beers in the office, iHascoNIANs live and breathe our 5 key values, which are as follows:

1. Have fun and look after each other
2. Seek constant improvement
3. Make training simple
4. Make a genuine difference
5. No fools!

With everyone buying into these 5 key values, we believe we’ve created a fantastic team culture here at iHasco, but we know there is always room for improvement, after all, it is one of our values…