Fall is one of my favorite times of year. The weather is finally cooling off from the sweltering heat of the summer. Football is just around the corner. Over recent years, I have re-engaged myself in college football, attending at least eight (8) games per season over the last three years. What started initially as showing our support for our youngest, who is part of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band, resulted in me taking a renewed interest in college football.  In addition to 8 A&M games this year, I’m venturing off to Boise State for a game this year.  I am hoping to visit a new stadium each year.

We had the good fortune of visiting Tuscaloosa, Alabama a couple of years back for the Alabama-A&M game. Having been raised in Alabama, I am still a fan (unless they are playing A&M, of course)!  There’s no arguing that the success of Alabama is a product of having great leadership and coaching. However, if you look at their recruiting classes as well as the recruiting classes of teams that finish at or near the top each year, you will find that these teams are flush with abundant talent.

Of course, there have been those times where we’ve all seen and likely been a part of coming out on the winning hand, despite not having the best players on the team. Certainly strategy and leadership play a big part in winning and losing.  Coaching and leadership is a necessity, has you have to get the most out of the talent you have to achieve the goal:  winning the game, executing on a project, etc.

We were meeting with a customer earlier this week in Seattle. Despite being a very small company with a short history and a handful of clients, we were confident that we had the best team to ensure success for this customer to prepare their infrastructure for an Epic implementation. The customer also recognized the talent of our team and acknowledged that we had talent, skills and experience not possessed by the other 17 firms that had participated in the RFP process.

So as we enter this new football season, we also will continue to focus on continuing to bringing in highly talented individuals with a strong work ethic and matching our culture to help move our team forward and grow our company.