Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Together We Can Do the Impossible

John C. Maxwell

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781418534851
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Teamwork makes the dreamwork by John Maxwell.

The concept to this book is a warm approach to the idea of: Only by working in a team will you fulfill your dreams. The focus of the book is on realizing one's dreams, achieving those goals by working in teams. Teams come in every shape and size--spouses in a marriage, colleagues at work, volunteers together for a good cause... It takes teamwork to make the dream work. 

What is Your Dream?

TO ACHIEVE ALL THAT IS POSSIBLE,
WE MUST ATTEMPT THE IMPOSSIBLE.
TO BE ALL WE CAN BE, WE MUST DREAM
OF BEING MORE. TO REACH OUR DREAMS,
WE MUST REACH OUT TO OTHERS.

—JOHN C. MAXWELL

The successful attainment of a dream
is a cart and horse affair.
Without a team of horses,
a cart full of dreams can go nowhere.

—REX MURPHY

Most men die from the neck up
at age twenty-five
because they stop dreaming.

—BEN FRANKLIN

THE SEED OF A DREAM

One of the great dreamers of the twentieth century was Walt Disney. Any person who could create the first sound cartoon, first all-color cartoon, and first animated feature-length motion picture is definitely someone with vision. But Disney’s greatest masterpieces of vision were Disneyland and Walt Disney World. And the spark for that vision came from an unexpected place.

Back when Walt’s two daughters were young, he used to take them to an amusement park in the Los Angeles area on Saturday mornings. His girls loved it, and he did too. Amusement parks were a kid’s paradise, with wonderful atmosphere: the smell of popcorn and cotton candy, the gaudy colors of signs advertising rides, and the sound of kids screaming as the roller coaster plummeted over a hill.

The carousel especially captivated Walt. As he approached it, he saw a blur of bright images racing around to the tune of energetic calliope music. But when he got closer and the carousel stopped, he could see that his eye had been fooled. What he observed was shabby horses with cracked and chipped paint. And he noticed that only the horses on the outside row moved up and down. The others stood lifeless, bolted to the floor.

The cartoonist’s disappointment inspired him with a grand vision for an amusement park where the illusion didn’t evaporate, where children and adults could enjoy a great carnival atmosphere without the seedy side that accompanies some circuses and traveling carnivals. His dream became Disneyland.

The seed for most people’s dreams naturally springs from their everyday experiences. If you have not yet identified your dream, just keep your eyes and ears open, listen to your heart, and be open to every possibility.

—THE 21 INDISPENSABLE QUALITIES OF A LEADER

A goal properly set is halfway reached.

If you can dream it, you can do it.
Never lose sight of the fact that this
whole thing was started by a mouse.

—WALT DISNEY

People with goals succeed
because they know where they’re going.

—EARL NIGHTINGALE

Teamwork requires that
everyone’s efforts flow in a single direction.
Feelings of significance happen when
a team’s energy takes on a life of its own.

—PAT RILEY
THE WINNER WITHIN

A common reason goals aren’t accomplished
is they are not clearly defined. If employees
don’t understand their company’s goals and
its game plan, these goals won’t be achieved.
Football doesn’t make this mistake.
Its goals are always clearly defined.
At the end of the field is a goal line.
Why do we call it a goal line?
Because eleven people on the offensive
team huddle for a single purpose—
to move the ball across it. Everyone has
a specific task to do—the quarterback,
the wide receiver, each lineman, every player
knows exactly what his assignment is.
Even the defensive team has its goals, too—
to prevent the offensive team from
achieving its goal.

—JIM TUNNEY

Make no small plans for they have
no capacity to stir men’s souls.

—SOURCE UNKNOWN

HE RUNS NOT JUST IN HIS DREAMS

When Rick Hoyt was born in 1962, his parents possessed the typical excited expectations of first-time parents. But then they discovered that during Rick’s birth, his umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck, cutting off the oxygen to his brain. Later, Rick was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. “When he was eight months old,” his father, Dick, remembers, “the doctors told us we should put him away—he’d be a vegetable all his life.” But Rick’s parents wouldn’t do that. They were determined to raise him like any other kid.

AN UPHILL BATTLE

Sometimes that was tough. Rick is a quadriplegic who cannot speak because he has limited control of his tongue. But Rick’s parents worked with him, teaching him everything they could and including him in family activities. When Rick was ten, his life changed when engineers from Tufts University created a device that enabled him to communicate via computer. The first words he slowly and painstakingly punched out were, “Go Bruins.” That’s when the family, who had been following the NHL’s Boston Bruins in the playoffs, found out Rick was a sports fan.

In 1975, after a long battle the family was finally able to get Rick into public school, where he excelled despite his physical limitations. Rick’s world was changing. It changed even more two years later. When Rick found out that a fund-raising five-kilometer race was being put on to help a young athlete who had been paralyzed in an accident, he told his father that he wanted to participate.

Dick, then a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, was in his late thirties and out of...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• IT TAKES A TEAM
• PERSONAL SACRIFICE
• WORKING TOGETHER
• LEADING THE TEAM
• ENLARGING OTHERS
• WHAT IS YOUR DREAM?