A famous organist was performing a concert on a huge antique organ in front of a large audience. The bellows were hand-pumped by a boy seated behind a screen, unseen by any in the vast auditorium. The first part of the performance went very well, and at intermission the organist took his bows as the listeners applauded enthusiastically. During the break, the musician rested in a side passageway. The boy came out to join him.

"We played well, didn't we, sir?" the boy asked.

The arrogant musician glared at him. "What do you mean, 'we'?"

After the intermission, the organist returned to his seat to begin his next number, but as he pressed his fingers down on the keys, nothing happened. The bellows produced no wind, and not a sound came out.

Then the organist heard a whisper from behind the screen: "Say, mister, now do you know what 'we' means?"

Out of the mouths of babes, as they say.

I've written more than a dozen columns during the last 18-plus years on the importance of teamwork. You might wonder what else there is to say. The simple answer: plenty! As long as projects require the efforts of more than one person, we'll keep talking about teamwork.

Michael Jordan, in his book "I Can't Accept Not Trying," writes: "There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships."

In Japanese culture, institutionalized conflict is an integral part of management. At Honda, any employee, however junior, can call for a "waigaya" session. The rules are that people lay their cards on the table and speak directly about problems.

Nothing is off-limits, from supervisory deficiencies on the factory floor to perceived lack of support for a design team. "Waigaya" legitimizes tension so that learning can take place.

Teamwork begins with the hiring process. Ask interview questions that uncover teamwork skills. Listen for stories or examples of "we" accomplishments, and unless the candidate was a one-person shop, the answers should include clues to a collaborative attitude.

A team approach requires a specific set of skills and behaviors from your workforce. Lone wolves and mavericks may not mesh well within a team environment, so when you're hiring people for a true team, ask these questions:

-- Why do you want to join this team? Look for people who are interested in the goals of the team, not in achieving success on their own. Find out what the candidate has done in the past, and what other work options he or she has considered.

-- What relevant teamwork experience do you have? Teamwork skills usually carry over across departments or industries. Probe to find out how the person has worked cooperatively with others in pursuit of group goals.

-- What's most important in working on a team? Teamwork means different things to different workers. Find out what teamwork skills the candidate values -- communication, reaching consensus, cooperative decision-making -- and discuss these in depth.

-- How have you handled conflicts on previous teams? No team functions without some disagreement. You'll find out a lot about your potential teammate by exploring his or her approach to, and experience with, conflict between team members or between the team and other parts of the organization.

Certainly, sports provide easy examples of teamwork in action. Perhaps the most visible example of how much a team values contributions of everyone involved in great success is when the time comes to award championship rings. A few years back, I spearheaded a committee to save the men's golf program at the University of Minnesota, which was scheduled to be eliminated. That same year, at impossible odds, the team won the NCAA men's golf tournament. I don't wear much jewelry, but the championship ring that they generously presented to me never comes off my finger.

Mackay's Moral: "We" is a little word that sends a big message.

"The surest way for an executive to kill himself is to refuse to learn how, and when, and to whom to delegate work," said James Cash Penney, founder of J.C. Penney Co.

When you grow, you have to know when to let go. You have to know when to delegate so you can rise up. The inability to delegate properly is the main reason that executives fail. I've learned people will seldom let you down if they understand that your destiny is in their hands, and vice versa.

Delegating is a key management skill, but managers often mistake delegation for passing off work. Failing to effectively delegate wastes your time as well as the company's time and resources.

Personal experience starting and running Mackay Envelope Co., now MackayMitchell Envelope Co., taught me this. There came a day when we had grown to the point where I had to hire a person below me to run the company day to day, while I scanned the horizon, studying our industry and the company's future direction.

The reason? You don't want to be micromanaging and end up macromangling. The captain's place is on the bridge and not knee-deep in the bilge. As the person steering an enterprise, you keep your head high and your vision unobstructed so you can study the big responsibilities, while maintaining authority and control. Many aspects of this art can't be taught. Pulling it off successfully can't be analyzed or quantified, but it can be qualified. If you don't get quality people, you're doomed.

In his book, "Further Up the Organization," Robert Townsend wrote: "Leaders delegate whole important jobs. Non-leaders make all final decisions themselves."

Learning to delegate often requires a detour outside your comfort zone. How do you start delegating successfully?

-- Don't look for perfection. Your objective is to get the job done, not create a masterpiece. Establish a standard of quality and a fair time frame for reaching it. Once you establish the expectations, let your staff decide how to carry out the project.

-- Provide complete job instructions. Make sure your employee has all the information needed to complete the job. Confirm that he or she understands -- and accepts -- the requirements.

-- Stop believing you're the only one who can do the job properly. Just because an employee does things differently, doesn't mean they won't do the job right. If you establish expectations of the end goal and the standards to follow, then methodology shouldn't be an issue. An important and often overlooked part of delegation is that it helps develop employees for advancement and creates a better work environment.

-- Focus on teaching skills. Delegating doesn't mean passing off work you don't enjoy, but letting your employees stretch their skills and judgment. As you hand over greater responsibility, it's important to understand that learning new skills sometimes includes making mistakes. Don't punish employees who make a good-faith effort to do things right.

-- Check on progress. Let the employee do the work, but check in periodically. Don't look over employees' shoulders or watch their every move. When you outline the expectations in the beginning, make sure you build in checkpoints for follow-up.

-- Thank the people who have accepted the responsibility. Make sure employees know their efforts are recognized and appreciated.

A new hotel employee was asked to clean the elevators and report back to the supervisor when the task was completed. When the employee failed to appear at the end of the day, the supervisor assumed that like many others, the employee had not liked the job and left. However, after four days the supervisor bumped into the new employee. He was cleaning in one of the elevators.

"You surely haven't been cleaning these elevators for four days, have you?" asked the supervisor, accusingly.

"Yes, sir," said the employee. "This is a big job, and I've not finished yet. Do you realize there are more than 40 of them, two on each floor, and sometimes they are not even there."

Mackay's Moral: The most successful managers aim at making themselves unnecessary to their staff.

OK, all you golfers -- ever played a skins game? In simple terms: Players during a round of golf wager on the best score for a single hole. If there's a tie, the "pot" rolls over to the next hole. One result of a skins game can be to up the ante on each hole. The backlash is taking your eyes off the long haul. In a skins game, you play for short-term stakes. As a result, strategy goes out the window.

Unfortunately, some people run their businesses that way. They muddle along in a never-ending skins game. This doesn't happen just in tiny companies. An insider at a famous blue-chip giant once quipped: "Our idea of long-term planning here is deciding what we'll do after lunch."

Anyone who has participated in a skins game on a golf course knows the painstaking attention paid to the line of every putt. It's a lot like what Peter Drucker describes as "the last of the deadly sins" of business, which he defines as "feeding problems and starving opportunities."

Drucker has long been considered the definitive authority on business planning. His principles are still widely used decades after his revolutionary writing on the concept of "management by objectives." Drucker sorted out a baffling world.

Planning boils down to two fundamental processes: goals and objectives. It is important to distinguish between the two. Goals are considered the purely quantitative and mostly financial targets. Objectives are more qualitative and elusive.1

Make your goals, and you stay in business. Advance your objectives, and you build a business worth having. The distinction between goals and objectives is hardly pure. Often objectives have quantitative measures attached to them as well, but they are rarely just numerical yardsticks.

At the age of 85, Drucker wrote "Managing in a Time of Great Change." A key premise: "Uncertainty -- in the economy, society, politics -- has become so great as to render futile, if not counterproductive, the kind of planning most companies still practice: forecasting based on probabilities."

Translation: Things no longer rest on a predictable base. How would I describe this sort of uncertainty? We live in a world where: "Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes." And, "Artificial intelligence usually beats real stupidity."

Companies spend days, if not weeks, agonizing over their mission statements and business plans. How much precious, misspent time goes into the process? Get the business model right, and then accessorize it with the details. You may not need more than a few action plans focused on very restricted areas.

In real estate, it's location, location, location. In management, it's preparation, preparation, preparation. But, be very, very careful. It's not the sheer magnitude of the preparation that matters. It's the relevance of what you do. Is it clear? Will it change behavior? Does it sizzle?

Business can take some lessons on preparation from world-class athletes. For a recent seminar on goals and planning, I invited Peter Vidmar to be my guest. Vidmar is the highest scoring American gymnast in Olympic history and was the star of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. He captained the USA men's gymnastics team to its first Olympic gold. He is now chairman of the USA Gymnastics Board of Directors and a broadcast commentator.

Vidmar understands goal setting in a very tangible way. Preparing for the Olympics is a life quest for these athletes.

He offered this advice: "Goals have to be realistic. I really take issue with any of those people who say you can be anything you want to be, because that's really not true. I'm 5 feet 5 inches and 130 pounds. There is no way I'm going to end up in the NFL. I think goals need to be measured and clearly defined. They also need to be time sensitive. You should give yourself deadlines.

"I think a goal should answer some questions," he continued. "In other words, be specific. It should answer 'what' -- what is it that you want to accomplish? It should answer 'why' -- why is it important to you? It should answer 'when' -- when are you going to get this done by? It should certainly answer 'how' -- how are you going to do it? Make sure your goals are meaningful for you."

And finally, Vidmar said: "When you work with a team, and when this goal is going to take a team effort, you've got to figure out a way to get each member of the team to take ownership of the goal themselves."

Mackay's Moral: You'll never reach your goal if you don't have one.