There is no “i” in “team”

Eighteen times a year, you’ll find me at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta, cheering on the Atlanta United Football Club (AUFC), fondly called by some the Five Stripes, in homage to our inaugural home kit.
Talking to some colleagues recently, I realized there are a lot of parallels between the Five Stripes and ImagineX. Are we dominating a soccer league? No, but much like the Five Stripes currently sitting at the top of the MLS standings, ImagineX is building a team to dominate the professional technology services world. And there are some commonalities in building a successful team, whether on the soccer pitch or in consulting.
It starts with a vision. Arthur Blank knew what he wanted in an MLS team for Atlanta. And the founders of ImagineX knew what they wanted in a company. It took time and effort, and some tweaks, but the vision came together. Once the seeds of the vision were planted, it was time to start building a team, both operationally and the players on the pitch. It doesn’t matter how great your players are, if you aren’t set up to manage your business successfully, you will fail.  So like the management team for AUFC, ImagineX put together an operations team focused on making our business successful.
Once you have this roster of great talent, you have to learn how to play well together. It’s a lot of practice and give and take. Just as AUFC changes its starting 11 for each match, ImagineX looks at our talent pool and our clients’ specific needs and puts together the right team for each project. Like the Five Stripes, we have to build relationships off the pitch, and stay conditioned.
In professional services that means knowing and trusting our colleagues, and understanding what our clients need and truly partnering with them to achieve their goals. We may not be in the gym lifting weights or on the practice pitch running training drills, but we don’t stop learning. We have to stay on top of industry trends, the latest technologies, and potential threats to our clients.
AUFC knows how to win, like ImagineX knows how to deliver successfully for our clients. But sometimes things happen. A player gets a penalty; an unexpected obstacle arises in a project.We have to adapt to the circumstances and not lose focus on the end goal. AUFC has to leave it all on the pitch. We have to give it our all, every client, every project. We’re playing the major leagues, and we’re making our mark.
Authored by Ashley Williams, Account Lead at ImagineX Consulting