My pulse quickens each year at this time as NFL teams report to Training Camp, remembering hot, bright days in Jacksonville and Tampa as our Jaguars and Buccaneers players arrived and we started another season full of hope.

And if the sun hits just right off the morning dew, I can flash right back to early morning practices at Duke thirty-seven years ago under the watchful eye of Steve Spurrier, and my younger self thinking, I didn’t think North Carolina got this hot.

With that in mind – and school starting soon, baseball entering the second half of the season, and the Olympics Opening Ceremony tonight! – I’m going to spend a couple of weeks discussing building strong, high performing teams for our organizations.

It turns out that the menus mattered, but not in the way I thought.

I was twenty-nine years old when I was hired by the Jacksonville Jaguars, having left a terrific law firm of great people (including Bruce, a great mentor and former UNC pitcher who was willing to overlook my Duke background) in Greensboro, North Carolina, a sad farewell softened by the promise of working in the Jaguars player personnel department negotiating player and coach contracts and salary cap matters.

“But first,” I was told, “we need you to handle team travel.” The prior travel coordinator had departed for the New York Islanders, leaving a void that apparently I was going to fill.

My biggest challenge? I’m simply not wired that way. It was a position for the organized, for those left-brain types who can efficiently pack a moving truck or effectively create and stick with a routine. I quickly realized that I’m more naturally wired to think creatively, to see connections, to find storylines. Not create a checklist. Or follow one.

Thankfully, I had helpful hands around me to help me navigate the airline seating charts, the hotel rooming lists, the charter bus departure schedules, and the other details that probably come so easily to others. (I’m looking at you, Jeff Leinen.)

Even so, the fish-out-of-water feeling caused me to push back in the early days of my role during that 1998 season, or at least not fully embrace it. It felt unnatural. I was using spreadsheets and meal specifications that I’d inherited. I felt like I was pushing a rock uphill.

Thankfully, early in the season, I had a moment that changed my thinking. After several games, a few players came to me about the pre-game meal menu hoping for a change. “We’ve been eating the same thing since the Jaguars joined the NFL (in 1995).” I was warned by coworkers that the menus couldn’t be changed, because our head coach, Tom Coughlin, had brought them from Boston College (his prior position) and they were exactly what he wanted.
Nevertheless, I decided to go talk to Coach Coughlin about it.

“Nathan, I don’t care what they eat,” he said. “I brought those menus from BC because they were handy. Just consult with our Team Nutritionist, and let them eat whatever they want if she approves.”

“It’s like every other part of your job. Your role is to make all aspects of our travel as smooth and unnoticed as possible so that the players can stay relaxed and keep their focus on the game, not the stress of getting there,” he concluded.

And with that, the penny dropped and I came to a new realization. I wasn’t the person struggling with deciding who should sit together on the flight or with standing on the curb waiting for the buses to arrive in the dark.

Well, I was. But I was also the person who was doing whatever I could to keep their focus on our opponent that week.

Was my role solely responsible for our playoff appearance that year? Of course not. Boselli, Brunell, Smith, Taylor, McCardell, Brackens, Hollis, Brady, Hardy, Schwartz, etc, were the ones who made it all happen. Did my role contribute?

I’d like to think so.

Especially once I really dug in and owned the role as best I could. Following all those checklists was never going to come as naturally to me as it would to someone else, but I eventually got pretty good at not only tracking them, but adjusting them with my own tweaks.

So…embrace your role. Own it. For the good of the organization.

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