When your 8 year old reminds you of Al Capone, you may have some issues...Happy 2019 Friends of Dave! I hope everyone was able to enjoy some downtime to reflect over the holidays and spend precious time with family and loved ones. A warm welcome back as we enter into Year 3 of the Friends of Dave newsletter.I had an interesting catalyst for my own personal reflection this past holiday: my youngest son. He is 8 and is obsessed with sports. Loves reading about them. Loves participating in them. Loves talking about them. Loves watching them. Loves to pretend he is making big plays and provides his own commentary while acting them out. My other kids could care less -- but this one has been all in since he could walk and talk. As a sports fan, I love it. As a parent, it is exhausting....and if you happen to know someone like this or have one of these in your house, you understand what I mean...My son's obsession runs so deep that he actually wears a different sports team jersey EVERY DAY, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. No exaggeration. Football, hockey, baseball, or soccer -- it really doesn't matter. College and pro teams from any geographic location. Rookies and long retired players. Throwbacks, color rush and alternate jerseys. If it has a team logo on it and numbers on the back, it is in the rotation until he outgrows it. Cold out? He wears long sleeves or a sweatshirt underneath. Hot out? He will sweat in all of his polyester glory and get heat stroke before resorting to a plain T-shirt. His favorite Christmas gift? Forget any of the toys. He will tell you without hesitation it was the Cristiano Ronaldo Juventus soccer jersey. What drives this obsession? I think it came to me in an odd way as we were at his rec basketball game just before the holidays. For whatever reason, as I stood there watching second graders ignore basic basketball rules and happily skip their way to the hoop without dribbling, I kept hearing the words from a scene from The Untouchables in my head. It's the one where Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) addresses his men, who are sitting at a round table, about baseball, individual achievement and teamwork. Spoiler alert: the Capone monologue does not end well for one member of the crew.Then I had a light bulb moment. I don't think he loves each sport as much as he simply enjoys being part of a team. He enjoys getting dressed in the uniform. He enjoys the huddle. He enjoys being coached. He enjoys arguing with the ref. He enjoys sitting on the bench with his teammates. He enjoys competing and the high fives after he or a teammate scores. He enjoys the celebrations when they win and the pats on the back after they lose. And he also enjoys pretending that he is a real part of whatever team his jersey represents on any given day. I can absolutely relate. I realized that I too enjoy being part of a team. I suppose I always have been energized by it -- whether it was my own sports endeavors growing up, my connection to my alma mater, the communities in which I have lived or each of the companies where I have worked. Friend of Dave and former colleague Betsy Eisenberg used to come into my office and tease me, playfully referring to the row of pictures of my family on my credenza as "Team Frankel." I think that was a message I must have been sending subconsciously to co-workers -- "See these people here? They are my first team." All of this makes my current role as a consultant a weird one. While it provides me with a lot of flexibility to see and stay engaged with my family and the variety of professional challenges I am hired to tackle keeps things fresh and intellectually stimulating, as a consultant-for-hire you are never really a member of a work team. Sure during an engagement you can get on conference calls with clients, sit in meetings in their offices, go out for drinks with them, even get the passcode to the restroom, but for consultants it's ultimately like my son and his relationship with his sports team jerseys. We can pretend when we are wearing them that they are real thing, but each day we end up putting on a different one. There are days I find that I miss being a real part of a work team. I spent most of my adult life as part of a number of great teams (a bunch of Friends were on those teams with me). I miss the camaraderie, the rah-rah, the common purpose, the highs when competitive business is closed and the lows when you need to figure out how to get out of a tailspin. I even miss the unique brand of politics that go along with any organization or culture (okay, maybe not that so much). I now realize that I can be much more effective at what I do well when I share a connection to a team of people that I like and respect. And just when I think I have figured it all out, I hear a voice from another room in my house. It's a boy wearing a Tom Brady jersey, providing his own play-by-play commentary about throwing a touchdown pass to himself to win a game as he crashes onto a couch. I get up from my laptop, shaking my head with a smile, and walk over to give him a high five....quickly scanning the room to make sure he didn't break a lamp before returning to the project I was completing...Long intro, I know, but it has been a while. Thanks for sticking with it. I tried to take it easy on the links this week in return. Have a great weekend everyone!XOXODave