Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare. - Patrick Lencioni

I've found that, in most cases, managers greatly underestimate the impact that a comment or quick gesture of approval has on employees. They'll spend weeks trying to tweak an annual bonus program or some other compensation system, believing that their employees are coin-operated, but they'll neglect to stop someone during a meeting and say, "Hey, that's a fantastic example of hunger. We should all try to be more like that." I'm not saying that compensation doesn't matter. But if we want to create a culture of humility, hunger, and smarts, the best way to do it is to constantly be catching people exhibiting those virtues and publicly holding them up as examples. No balloons, pastries, or plastic tchotchkes are necessary, just genuine, in-the-moment appreciation.

Second, there is no substitute for discipline. No amount of intellectual prowess or personal charisma can make up for an inability to identify a few simple things and stick to them over time.

The essence of a cohesive leadership team is trust, which is marked by an absence of politics, unnecessary anxiety, and wasted energy. Every executive wants to achieve this, but few are able to do so because they fail to understand the roots of these problems, the most damaging of which is politics.