“Everyone’s excited and enthusiastic when they first come in, but once you’ve been there for a while - you see it in some guys after a couple of years - it’s easy to start meandering through. What you’ve got to do then is reassess what gets you going. What actually drives you”.

People and units can easily start to ‘settle’ or to ‘coast’ and before you know it, you are accepting situations and standards that you previously would not have.  Richie’s call to rediscover the essence and passion for what you are doing and why is a welcome change from the more usual and instrumental reactions.  Imagine Richie suggesting a redesign of the game plan chart or ‘more players’ as the answer.

Be demanding. Don’t settle. Do people the courtesy of ‘talking straight with them’.His other gem in the same interview is this one: “Perhaps, early on, I just blithely expected people to do what I wanted them to do, but sometimes you’ve just got to be straight and tell them, ‘this is what’s required, this is what I expect’.  Just say it. Be demanding, if it’s the right thing for the team.”

And can you just imagine any of the team responding to Richie’s call by rolling their eyes and thinking ‘yeah, whatever’ or standing with their best passive-aggressive smile on, or heading off to the All Black’s HR Department to say that there hand’t been enough consultation meetings and that they ‘felt threatened’ by his requirements.

Richie McCaw wouldn’t accept that for a nanosecond in his world leading team.  Why would you accept it in your health care team that aspires to a similar greatness?