13 May CEO Insights: The Importance of Teamwork

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Ted Williams, the greatest hitter in the history of baseball. He was the last player in Major League Baseball to hit over .400 in a season. He understood the mechanics and the mental game of hitting better than any other player to play the game.

But he never won a World Series.

His hitting prowess wasn’t enough to lead the Boston Red Sox to a championship in any of his 19 seasons. Baseball is not an individual sport. It takes a team to win a championship. Williams played with some great ballplayers during his tenure on the Red Sox, but they weren’t a team.

One of the Red Sox players of that era once said that when the team landed at an airport, it was “25 players, 25 cabs.” And that individual mentality was the downfall of what could have been championship-winning teams.

In contrast, in 2014 and 2015, a small-market baseball team in Kansas City put together back-to-back runs to the World Series. They had some good players, but they didn’t have any superstars. They made their run – and won the 2015 World Series – solely based on team play.

On paper, those teams shouldn’t have won. They didn’t hit home runs at a particularly impressive pace. They had decent stats, but they weren’t setting the world on fire with their batting averages. What they did have, though, was a belief in themselves and the people around them. They knew they were better together than they were as individuals.

Because that’s what working as a team does. It makes everyone on the team better than they can be alone. It lets us accomplish big things that would be too much for one person to do by themselves.

At BEMA, working as a team lets us provide our membership with great experiences like Convention. It also means we’re excited when we get to add new team members.

Welcome to the Team

This month, we’re excited to welcome two new members to our team: Wes Luczak and Ella Bowers.

Some of you may already recognize Ella as she has interned with BEMA at Convention and IBIE. She is a recent graduate of the University of Arkansas and is joining us as a project assistant. Her experience in event management and hospitality will bring a new dimension to our event staff.

Wes Luczak is our new membership manager. He has previous experience in membership management for non-profits and trade organizations and focuses on asking good questions and actively listening to the answers to find solutions to any pain points members experience. He also proudly wears the title “Cheer Dad” as he supports his two cheerleader daughters.

We’re excited to welcome Wes and Ella to our team and hope you’ll get to know them in the coming months.

Our Team at Work

As many of you know, Convention is right around the corner, and our team is busy making the final plans for our industry get-together. We have some exciting changes to announce for this year’s event.

First, we will have an in-person location at BEMA Convention where you can participate in Workforce Edition, our virtual program offering. We’re excited to connect this virtual experience with our in-person attendees.

Second, in an effort to be more environmentally conscious, we are moving to digital sponsor signage. This allows us to drastically reduce our foamboard and paper usage while also creating new options for our sponsors to use video footage to better display their products on our sponsor screens.

Last, we are diversifying our attendees. Members asked for a wider variety of bakers to attend the show, so we reached out to research and development and innovation team members at baking companies. Many of these people will be attending, providing more opportunities for collaboration and innovation during Convention.

A Winning Mentality

Convention is our biggest event of the year. It takes every one of our team members working together to create this experience, and we are always looking for ways to make the experience better for attendees. Social media sponsorships, tours, small group dinners, and BEMA Connect are all aimed at helping attendees get the most out of their time at the event.

Our team knows that working together, we can create an event and an organization that does so much more for our industry than any of us could do on our own. Because we know that while it might be nice to be the greatest hitter who ever lived, it’s more rewarding to have your name on the trophy.