As a member of the “Miracle on Ice” hockey team that defied expectations by beating their mighty Russian rivals to score Olympic gold medals in 1980, Jim Craig has learned some critical lessons about the mindset required to meet difficult goals.
And many of those lessons can be adopted for other pursuits, such as building teams of business professionals to compete in global trade and supply chain technology, he told attendees at Manhattan Associates’ annual “Momentum” user conference, held this week in Las Vegas.
One of the foundations of the team’s success was the way in which national team hockey coach Herb Brooks selected the amateur players and formed them into a cohesive team, Craig said. “We went from having the same dream—every one of us wanted to play in the NHL—to having a shared dream—which was to win an Olympic gold medal.”
Brooks achieved that by asking each individual player what his goal was, and then developing the players to reach that target, instead of simply using each player for his existing strengths.
He also taught the team how to adopt a “winning underdog mindset” so they could envision beating the powerful Russian team that everyone else assumed would win. “He prepared our team to get comfortable at feeling uncomfortable,” Craig said.
Through that process, the team grew to believe that they could achieve what most people thought was impossible. “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough,” Craig said. “And if you play not to lose, you can never win.”
