Organize Tomorrow Today

Why is it that some teams seem to effortlessly produce greatness year after year, while others—despite talent and resources—collapse under pressure? In Organize Your Team Today, performance coach Dr. Jason Selk and business strategist Tom Bartow argue that high-performing teams aren’t born—they’re built through deliberate systems of focus, trust, and disciplined mental habits. The authors contend that sustainable group success comes from mastering organizational psychology: understanding how people think, work, and connect under shared pressure.

Based on decades of coaching elite athletes, Fortune 500 executives, and financial advisors, Selk and Bartow present a manual for transforming talented individuals into cohesive, unstoppable teams. They use examples from dynastic sports programs—the St. Louis Cardinals under Tony La Russa, Nick Saban’s Alabama football teams, and John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins—to illustrate how greatness comes from structure, clarity, and mindset, not mere skill.

How Great Teams Are Made

Selk and Bartow begin with a simple truth: teams thrive when every member knows the most important goal and their specific role in achieving it. They argue that cohesion starts with alignment—every player understanding not only what the goal is but also why it matters. The authors draw parallels between sports and business, noting that dynasties like Belichick’s New England Patriots and Apple’s executive team under Tim Cook succeed because they maintain focused, clear expectations while cultivating adaptability and respect.

The book divides team development into three phases—Consistent Winning, Playoff Level, and Dynasty Level. Readers learn first how to stabilize performance, then how to handle adversity during high-stakes “playoff” moments, and finally how to build the rare culture that sustains excellence over decades. Each stage introduces tools grounded in psychology and leadership science, such as self-evaluation, trust-building, and structured goal management.

From Chaos to Clarity: The Mental Framework

At the heart of Selk and Bartow’s method is the notion of mental toughness. They argue that elite teams behave like elite minds: disciplined in thought, resistant to distraction, and capable of controlling emotional reactions under pressure. You must learn, they explain, to limit mental overload—what they call respecting your “channel capacity.” Teams and individuals often fail not because they lack ideas but because they try to change or accomplish too many things at once. The most effective leaders know when to delete distractions, focus on one priority, and master it before moving on.

The authors weave in cognitive science—explaining that humans can focus on only one improvement at a time—and practical examples of organizations that honor this principle. Ted Jones of Edward Jones, for instance, built one of America’s most successful financial networks by giving his advisors just two simple daily goals: meet twenty clients and open ten accounts per month.

Trust, Cohesion, and the Championship Mindset

Winning teams, Selk and Bartow emphasize, run on trust. They distinguish between superficial chemistry—liking your teammates—and deep cohesion, where everyone is accountable and aligned under common expectations. They tell stories like Tom Bartow’s “brick through the window” analogy, which taught financial clients to expect three good years and one bad year in any investment cycle. By managing expectations honestly, Bartow won trust that lasted decades. Likewise, coaches like Wooden and Belichick built their dynasties on clarity and repetition, ensuring players knew precisely what was required—and consistently delivered it.

The deeper lesson? Leadership is about managing human psychology. Teams perform better when leaders reduce uncertainty, eliminate unnecessary complexity, and affirm effort over perfection. As the authors note, mental toughness emerges from daily habits: clear priorities, respectful communication, honest feedback, and the courage to disagree agreeably.

Why These Ideas Matter

In today's workplace, collaboration is no longer optional—it’s the engine of innovation. Yet most teams underperform because they’re unfocused, overloaded, or plagued by mistrust. Organize Your Team Today provides a roadmap for reversing that decline through concrete, psychological practices. It’s not about motivational slogans or fancy management jargon; it’s about building systems people can believe in. By mastering channel capacity, managing expectations, evaluating with honesty, and fostering a no-victim mindset, you don’t just improve productivity—you make greatness repeatable. And as Selk and Bartow remind us, dynasties are not accidents; they are built, one disciplined day at a time.

Selk and Bartow open their method with what they call channel capacity—the scientific fact that the human brain has biological limits. You can juggle only three items in working memory at once, and you can learn only one new thing at a time. Overloading these limits doesn’t improve performance; it destroys it. The authors liken it to an overfilled sponge—when saturated, water (and focus) leaks out randomly.

The Perils of Overload

In corporate life, you’ve probably witnessed this firsthand: endless meetings, crowded inboxes, initiatives stacked on top of initiatives. The authors explain that most organizations violate channel capacity by demanding too much information, action, or improvement at once. Trying to beat biological limits leads to burnout and inconsistency. Even top performers falter when too many priorities compete for attention.

They illustrate with examples from the Cardinals, Edward Jones, and the Patriots. Ted Jones’s advisors succeeded because they focused only on two actionable goals—meet twenty people daily and open ten accounts monthly. Likewise, Belichick’s famous mantra, “Do Your Job,” distilled complex playbooks into one singular expectation per role. Focus replaced frenzy.

Three Rules for Honoring Channel Capacity

• Resist—Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can outperform biology. Accept that the mind and team have limits.
• Reject—More information doesn’t equal more productivity. Simplicity breeds mastery.
• Repeat—Reinforce the message daily. The more consistent your habits become, the more efficiently the team executes.

Whether you’re leading a sales division or a sports roster, respecting channel capacity means trimming the fat: cancel long meetings, cut redundant projects, and delete anything non-critical. As John Wooden advised, “The biggest mistake coaches make is they over-coach.” One improvement done well beats six attempted at once.

Focus, Simplify, Execute

By keeping focus within channel limits, teams experience what the authors call the “run-over effect”—confidence spills into other areas of performance. People who consistently finish their top one to three tasks daily develop a quiet belief in their own effectiveness. Confidence then multiplies across the team, turning ordinary effort into elite execution. In short: stop trying to do everything—just do the most important thing, and do it early.

What if the biggest source of failure in your relationships—professional or personal—came down to one simple thing: mismanaged expectations? Selk and Bartow argue that every breakdown in trust begins when people promise outcomes they can’t or won’t deliver. The cure is radical transparency: tell folks exactly what to expect, good and bad, and then deliver without excuses.

Trust or Suspicion?

The authors depict a hierarchy of relationships ranging from fear to suspicion to credibility to trust to loyalty and finally dependence. Every interaction moves you up or down this ladder. If you set clear expectations—about time, cost, or performance—and fulfill them honestly, you move toward trust and loyalty. Fail to do so, and you fall toward fear and suspicion.

Tom Bartow’s signature story of the “brick through the window” shows how this works. Early in his financial career, he told clients to expect three up years and one down year in their investments. When markets crashed, that honesty preserved their confidence—and loyalty. His clients didn’t panic; they wrote him new checks. That’s the power of expectation management.

Honesty, Time, and Follow-Through

• Time: Being punctual signals respect. In Cardinals culture, “on time” meant fifteen minutes early—the standard for trust.
• Honesty: Speak the full truth, even when it’s bad news. People forgive failure; they won’t forgive deception.
• Delivery: Do what you say you’ll do, when you said you’d do it. No excuses, ever.

Selk and Bartow insist that leaders must make this a habit, not a one-time display. They recount how Jason Selk’s first assignment with the Cardinals came with ultra-clear expectations: if his players didn’t improve more than the untrained ones, he’d be fired immediately. Everyone, from management to players, knew the rules—they delivered accordingly, winning the World Series that year.

Accountability vs. Excuses

The authors advocate a “no-excuse” mentality. Leaders who take full ownership—“I’m sorry; there’s no excuse. I’ll fix it.”—model integrity that spreads throughout the team. Making excuses signals weakness and breaks trust. Clarity, repetition, and accountability foster predictability; predictability builds trust; and trust drives cohesive performance. In essence, managing expectations is not a sales skill—it’s the bedrock of leadership.

No process matters if you never examine it. Selk and Bartow call self-evaluation “the genesis of all improvement.” Without honest reflection, you can’t grow—whether you’re an athlete, manager, or teammate. The authors draw from baseball coach Dave Duncan’s methods for turning struggling pitchers into champions: instead of dictating solutions, Duncan asked questions. What do you think will help? What’s one change you can make? This self-directed reflection built conviction, not dependency.

Conviction Beats Expertise

Telling someone what to fix imparts knowledge; asking them helps build belief. The authors write, “Conviction beats expertise seven out of ten times.” People act on ideas they own. To instill this, Selk used the Cardinals’ Success Log, where players listed three things they did well, one thing to improve, and one action step to make it happen. The habit sharpened focus and boosted confidence—mental toughness made visible on paper.

The Psychology of Self-Evaluation

Three mental laws govern performance

• PCT (Problem-Centric Thought): The brain naturally fixates on negatives. You must redirect attention toward what went right.
• Expectancy Theory: What you focus on expands. Thinking about wins makes more wins.
• Self-Confidence: The single biggest predictor of success. Confidence rises when you record done-wells and improvements.

Daily and Mini-Evaluations

The authors prescribe brief, daily reviews—three minutes to ask: What went well? How well did I execute my three most important tasks? What can I improve tomorrow? Frequent check-ins turn reflection into instinct. Over time, people start performing “mini-evaluations” throughout the day, like Belichick’s mid-game adjustments. Leaders can reinforce this with quarterly peer reflections—discussing achievements, do-overs, and next priorities.

Ultimately, self-evaluation fuels a culture of learning. It replaces perfectionism with progress and anchors teams in reality. As Selk puts it, “Knowing something does nothing; doing something does.” In short, improvement begins not with praise or punishment—but with thinking.

High-performing teams aren’t built on friendship; they’re built on alignment. Selk and Bartow distinguish casual chemistry—the comfort of getting along—from true cohesion, which arises when everyone knows the team’s goals and their role in achieving them. Cohesion transforms diverse personalities into complementary parts, like gears in a machine.

Goal Commonality and Role Integrity

Teams thrive when goal clarity and role integrity converge. Every member must understand both the product goal (one-year target) and the vision goal (three-year dream). Covey’s research (from The 8th Habit) showed only 37% of workers know their team’s goals—an alarming statistic. Selk and Bartow advise setting “realistically high” goals (10–20% improvement annually) to build confidence rather than burnout. Unrealistic goals trigger stress and failure; realistic ones create the habit of winning.

Point and Flow

To reinforce cohesion, the authors propose two tactics. First, Point: actively recognize teammates for contributive actions. Wooden famously graded his players on how often they “pointed” to a teammate after a score, cementing appreciation as culture. In business, leaders can do this through verbal praise or “done-well boards.” Second, Flow: protect uninterrupted time for focus. Distractions kill performance. The authors cite Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger: “It’s more important to know what not to do than what to do.” Short meetings, clear priorities, and daily focus on the ‘1 Must’ task cultivate that flow state.

The 2–1–1 Method

Communication drives cohesion. Selk and Bartow’s “2–1–1 Method” structures interactions: give two genuine compliments, teach one useful concept, and coach one action step. Whether between coworkers, clients, or players, the pattern deepens trust and sparks motivation. Compliments show respect, teaching provides value, and coaching inspires forward motion.

When every person knows their goals, commits to their daily ‘1 Must,’ and builds others up through recognition, chemistry evolves into cohesion. The team doesn’t just get along—it wins together.

Disagreements are inevitable; dysfunction is optional. Selk and Bartow teach that teams must learn to “disagree agreeably”—respecting alternate opinions as much as their own. Diversity of thought fuels innovation, but ego and emotion often turn collaboration toxic. The authors use vivid stories—from General Patton’s open debates to Steve Kerr’s player-inclusive coaching—to show that respectful dissent drives greatness.

Encouraging Disagreement

The best leaders invite opposition. At the Capital Group, the “Mike Shannahan Rule” required dissenting opinions to be given face-to-face, ensuring accountability and respect. Patton, too, encouraged officers to challenge his orders—provided they had facts. Good disagreement isn’t rebellion; it's refinement. Teams stagnate when everyone thinks alike.

Language of Respect

Benjamin Franklin learned to replace absolutes (“certainly”) with humility (“I imagine”). Phrases like “In my opinion” and “I could be wrong” open minds and prevent defensive reactions. Wooden’s advice—“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts”—captures the same idea. Great communicators ask for others’ opinions; they listen before they argue.

Gentleness and Listening

“The greatest strength is gentleness,” Abraham Lincoln once said, and Selk and Bartow agree. They share Wooden’s lesson card with an owl and the quote: “Listen if you want to be heard.” Active listening—asking open-ended questions, closing your eyes to hear tone, and avoiding interruptions—transforms conflict into collaboration. By combining patience with empathy, teams turn tension into creative friction.

Ultimately, disagreeing agreeably means prioritizing value over victory. Arguments aim to win; discussions aim to learn. Respect, trust, and gentleness preserve unity while allowing diversity. As Patton proved, you don’t lead by being right—you lead by being open.

Victimhood is the enemy of progress. Selk and Bartow insist that the difference between good teams and great ones is their ability to remain empowered under adversity. The no-victim mentality rejects excuses, blame, and powerlessness. It focuses on one solution to attack rather than wallowing in problems.

Recognize, Don’t Succumb

The authors outline stages of victimhood: failure to recognize negativity, succumbing to helplessness, and spreading the disease. Negative emotion acts as an alarm—stress, anger, or sadness signals your mind has fixated on a problem instead of a solution. The cure is awareness. When you sense negativity, say aloud: “I know what’s happening; I can always improve something.”

Stories of Resilience

Colonel Ed Hubbard, tortured for seven years as a Vietnam POW, refused to be a victim. He later wrote, “They could change our behavior but not our attitude.” Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl mirrored this insight: we cannot control conditions, but we can choose our attitude toward them. Likewise, Urban Meyer’s Ohio State team turned two season-ending quarterback injuries into motivation—focusing on “four to six seconds of relentless effort” per play. That mindset won the national championship.

Attack One Solution

Victimhood freezes teams; attacking one solution reactivates them. During the 2015 Department of Labor ruling anxiety, most financial advisors panicked over long paperwork hours. Bartow reframed it: treat the new regulation as a relationship opportunity. He urged advisors to meet three clients daily and educate them on the change. Those who attacked prospered; those who complained declined.

To eliminate victim thinking, the authors prescribe three steps: get your mind right, recognize negative emotion, and pick one actionable improvement. As Hubbard proved, freedom starts in attitude—choose power, not pity.

Talent alone doesn’t guarantee victory—it must be selected wisely and then developed relentlessly. Selk and Bartow reveal how elite leaders identify potential and turn it into production. They recount how the St. Louis Cardinals revolutionized scouting by analyzing players’ mindsets—not just physiques. Inspired by Carol Dweck’s research, the team sought optimistic, growth-oriented athletes who responded to challenges with effort, not fear.

Selecting for Growth

By 2007, Jason Selk built a model allowing scouts to measure “growth mindset” traits—players who believed talent was 49% natural ability and 51% practice. These recruits became future champions. In business, similar tests reveal employees who prioritize learning over status.

Four Interviews and the 4-E’s & 1-P

Tom Bartow suggests conducting at least four interviews in varied environments to see authenticity under pressure (building emotional channel capacity). Former GE CEO Jack Welch used the “4-E’s and 1-P” framework: Energy, Energize Others, Edge, Execution, and Passion. Research preparation and effort reveal true drive.

Developing Proven Talent

Bartow later launched Edward Jones’s “Top Gun” advanced training for elite advisors, proving that investing time in proven performers yields greater results than focusing solely on rookies. As Merrill Lynch’s Phil Blevins said, “Invest pennies in talent and you’ll earn dollars; invest dollars in rookies, you’ll get pennies.”

The lesson is simple: identify growth-oriented people, invest deeply in them, and maintain self-evaluation rituals. Just as Jerry West scouted players for how hard they practiced, great organizations develop effort and intelligence, not ego. Talent begins in mindset but matures through process.

Selk and Bartow’s mantra—“Attack, Always Attack”—represents relentless focus and passion. They draw inspiration from warriors and visionaries alike: Vikings who burned ships to eliminate retreat, Patton’s military ferocity, and Steve Jobs’s obsessive pursuit of excellence. To reach dynasty level, individuals and teams must cultivate this extreme focus on improvement.

Igniting Passion

Caring drives commitment. The authors instruct you to identify one thing you genuinely care about, one skill you excel at, and one work ethic habit to develop. By focusing on a small domain—say, boxing out in basketball or shelf precision at retail—you learn mastery through intensity. Physical health amplifies mental energy: 30 minutes of cardio four times a week and controlled habits reignite purpose.

Fight-Thru Days

The great ones distinguish themselves on “fight-thru” days—moments when motivation collapses. They ritualize effort, recognize resistance, and visualize consequences of quitting versus fighting. Emotional visualization—“How will I feel if I win or lose this fight-thru?”—triggers action. Each victory builds toughness for the next.

Rejecting the Victim Mindset

Attack and victim mentalities cannot coexist. After his NFL suspension, Tom Brady exemplified attack mindset by turning adversity into the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history. Similarly, PGA players and CEOs coached by Selk accelerated success by applying “a little bit more for a little while”—working 10% harder after each win to avoid complacency.

Ultimately, attack is a choice. Start with five minutes a day attacking your “1 Must.” Expand gradually. The obsession for improvement breeds momentum, and momentum builds dynasties. Persistence, passion, and discipline are not traits—they are decisions.

The final component of team mastery is adaptability. Abraham Maslow famously said, “To the man with only a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Selk and Bartow argue that great teams know how to use the full toolbox—they adjust strategically and mentally. The ability to pivot separates consistent winners from dynasties.

Strategic vs. Mental Adjustments

Strategic adjustments are changes in behavior—altering products, processes, or execution. Mental adjustments change attitude—understanding why a new tactic matters. Intel underestimated Japanese competition until Andy Grove asked, “What would a new CEO do?” The answer—shift from memory chips to microprocessors—saved the company. Similarly, Coach Roy Williams adapts plays mid-game, teaching that strategy shifts are useless without mental buy-in.

Timing and Evaluation

Adjustment timing is critical. In sports, a game clock forces action; in business, time illusions breed procrastination. Teams fail when they resist change after success or delay response to markets. The authors recommend deciding on one change at a time, attacking it aggressively, and evaluating results after thirty to ninety days. Simplify metrics; measure what moves results. If an adjustment isn’t working, readjust quickly.

Creating Conviction for Change

People resist orders; they embrace purpose. Leaders must explain the “why” behind change, connecting organizational benefits to personal ones. Simon Sinek’s Start With Why echoes this principle. Fear blocks progress, but as Col. Ed Hubbard taught, “They could change our behavior but not our attitude.” Energy and conviction must replace whining.

Selk and Bartow end by reaffirming courage as the cornerstone of adjustment: “If you let fear for self come before helping others, you will fail.” Dynasties stay flexible—altering tactics while anchoring values. Projects evolve. People adapt. But purpose, conviction, and focus remain immovable.