I encourage friendly competition among the design team. But I also remind everyone that their colleague sitting across the desk is not the enemy. That’s Honda and Toyota. —J Mays
It’s so easy to get caught up in internal politics, but I like how J Mays frames the overarching goal of working on a team: It’s to beat the other team(s).
Mays’ quote reminds me of when my late mentor, Whitman Richards, once told me to not worry about squabbles around me at MIT, and instead to, “Think about the world.” In other words, to consciously choose to compete at a world-class level instead of wasting your time on the smaller things that can sometimes surround your span of attention. —JM
