Becoming Comrades-in-Arms

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“You become a team by winning. You never become a team by losing,” Jed Stone states emphatically.

“A team is built through a series of small successes in training. A team that has accumulated these successes goes on to win on the battlefield, and its members become comrades-in-arms.”

The same applies in business. Repeated successes build trust among team members.

Trust creates a team and forges bonds that last a lifetime.

Deep Dive

Jed is Mr. Teamwork. To me, he is the ultimate role model for building high-performance teams.

Above all else, Jed values winning as a team. He makes sure that everyone celebrates the victory itself. Whether it is a small success in a training exercise or the achievement of a challenging annual target, his approach never changes. As soon as success comes into sight, he begins thinking about where and how to celebrate it. His aim is to ensure that every team member experiences a profound sense of achievement at the moment of success.

Even after a successful business simulation exercise, Jed takes the time to speak personally to each participant. He calls everyone by name and expresses specific appreciation for their individual contributions. When he says to me,

“Jin, that idea of yours really saved us when everyone was stuck. We succeeded because of it.”

my sense of achievement becomes even greater.

Another way to strengthen team bonds is to analyse logically why the team succeeded and share those insights with everyone. Even after a small training exercise, instead of simply shouting,

“We did it! We made it!”

imagine hearing something like this:

“First, everyone acted quickly right from the start. Several ideas emerged, and the whole team discussed them openly before agreeing on a single approach. In the second half, everyone believed in the approach they had chosen and kept practising with the conviction that they would succeed. That was an outstanding team effort.”

It is only natural that such words would greatly strengthen the mutual trust among everyone who participated.

As Jed explains,

“In the military, we build mutual trust by accumulating successful team experiences during training. As both individual capabilities and team performance improve, we develop the confidence to say, ‘We are bulletproof,’ when we head into battle. Of course, learning from failures and making continuous improvements are also essential parts of that process.”

Jed is equally skilled at turning failure into an opportunity for future success.

“The communication between team members at that critical moment was excellent.”

“Everyone contributed plenty of good ideas. If we had checked our assumptions more carefully, we could have succeeded. This is a team that can definitely succeed next time.”

I have personally experienced how hearing such feedback can strengthen my trust in my fellow team members.

I learned that even when the final outcome is failure, there are often many small successes along the way. By recognising and acknowledging those successes together, team members can build mutual trust.

Jed and his colleagues often tell me,

“Repeated success in training will undoubtedly strengthen a team's capabilities. But you only become true comrades-in-arms when you have fought together on the battlefield and survived.”

Whenever I hear this, I sometimes find myself wondering,

“Is this how they recruit soldiers?”

About ten years ago, I helped a client's management team lead a major organisational transformation. I still meet with them once a year.

We enjoy reminiscing about those days:

“We managed to meet every one of those seemingly impossible demands from global headquarters, didn't we?”

“Even when other divisions in Japan tried to undermine us, we never gave up. We saw it through.”

“And we didn't just achieve our business targets. We also became one of the top-performing organisations globally in the employee engagement survey.”

When we gathered last year, someone brought along the organisation chart from that time. Looking at it together, we became even more animated.

“Oh yes! We succeeded because these managers worked so hard!”

“Ah, now this person really gave us a hard time!”

To the restaurant staff, we must have looked like a rather peculiar group, getting so excited while huddled around an old organisation chart.

Of the more than ten members of the original management team, only one still works for the company. All the others have moved on and are now thriving in different organisations.

Although I was never an employee of the company, I shared their challenges and triumphs from the very beginning of the project, starting with the creation of their vision. Because of those shared experiences, they always invite me to their annual reunion.

Whenever we get together, I find myself thinking,

“They really do regard me as one of their comrades-in-arms.”

And I reflect once again on Jed's words:

“Winning makes you a team.”

As professional business leaders, we are expected to deliver results. It is by achieving results together that we become a team, and it is through becoming a team that we forge the bonds of comrades-in-arms.

I have always liked a saying attributed to Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda:

“The value of life is determined by the number of times you are deeply moved.”

Every time I achieve a seemingly impossible goal together with a team, I find myself thinking,

“Ah, this is why I work so hard — to experience moments like this.”

And each time, I am reminded that these moments of shared achievement are what make all the effort worthwhile.

Jed Stone: During 25 years in the British Royal Marines, Jed spent six years at Joint Services Mountaineering centres and three years at the Royal Naval School of Leadership and Management Training. Former world record holder in Zip Wire.