How to get into the final four of business: team! The problem of team has been pondered, solved and resolved since the dawn of time.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: [on] MANAGEMENT

Even a part-time basketball fan like me had to get excited by the prospects for the big game last month between Duke and Butler. Part of the excitement had to grow out of the drama created by the entire series of events leading up to the "Final Two."

A truly David vs. Goliath struggle. Butler almost won the game and in many ways did win more than Duke. The Bulldogs won the hearts of the fans, and perhaps there will never be a more popular underdog. According to the Washington Post, the inquiry lines for information about Butler University were out of service because of too many inquiries on a site that usually gets about 15 inquiries per day.

Duke, as everyone knows, whose basketball program spends about $17 million per year, managed a 2-point win over Butler, whose program spends only $1.4 million per year.

Both teams radiated a sense of "team" that got them to the final and helped them both play an epic game that would have been one of the best ever, whoever won. But how is it that when this capability of team presents itself, everyone recognizes and admires it, but very few know how to describe how it came to be or how to replicate it?

Literally since the beginning of time, men have been trying to make highly functioning teams out of groups of men (and women). Ghengis Kahn led tens of thousands of men to conquer huge armies with only the human voice to communicate with all those people. He was the first manager to understand the power of span of control. Nobody in Kahn's large army had more than 10 people reporting to him, while together, they conquered more of the world than has ever been conquered since.

Through history, teamwork has been accomplished with trickery, as with Sun-Tzu, the great general who said, "Treat your warriors as you would your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys!"

The Indians living m what is now Guatamala played team games in which the losing team would be killed! An extreme effort to motivate.

But what was visible during the final game of this year's edition of March Madness was confidence in self and confidence in teammates ... from both teams. They supported each other, trusted each other and fought for each other.

How can we get the same kind of teamwork in business as these fine coaches get from those really competent young men?

Know your business. Self confidence is born of knowing that you know...