“Just make contact.”

When I was a kid, I played on the local Navan baseball team. One year we had a perfect record, winning every single game we played on our way to the championship.

My dad was one of the coaches on the team, and years later I can still hear his voice booming “just make contact!” which was his consistent advice whenever one of our batters stepped up to the plate.

At the end of the season, each of our coaches received a baseball signed by all the kids on the team. My father still has that ball sitting in his office. Curiously, it sits directly in front of a plaque he received when the company he led completed their IPO on the TSX. That’s right, a baseball signed by a children’s team sits alongside a plaque that commemorates his greatest professional achievement.

But that ball, that plaque, and their long-standing resting place, represent something important. Whether you’re doing something huge in business or playing a youth baseball game, you don’t need to swing for the fences every time. Hitting singles and getting on base allows you to pass the bat to your teammate, who then has the same opportunity to pass the bat to the next person in line. When a team adopts this mindset, it can achieve massive results, whether that be a perfect season or an IPO.

Home runs are awesome, but their impact is limited by how many people are already on base. When the focus becomes making solid contact instead of chasing solo homers a team becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

So I hope that this week you don’t feel like you must crush any ball that comes your way. Focus on making contact, getting on base, and leveraging the power of your team. You’ll be rounding third before you know it.