This past weekend, my son wrapped up his competitive marching band season with a trip to the Bands of America Super Regionals in Indianapolis. It was the culmination of months of dedication from 300 high school students, all of whom were part of a voluntary program spanning three different schools in our community. These students began their journey in July and have spent over four hours per practice, a minimum of five days a week.
Let me say that again:
Voluntary. 300 teenagers. Five days a week. Four+ hours per practice.
All for a 15-minute show. Nine minutes of performance and six minutes of setup and teardown. And they crushed it.
If you’ve ever seen a high-level marching band performance, you know what I’m talking about. It’s not just music. It’s synchronized movement. It’s emotion. It’s storytelling. It’s precision on a scale most business teams could only dream of. And yet…they’re teenagers. No salary. No bonus. No KPI dashboard. Just accountability and shared purpose.
That got me thinking:
Why are high-performing teams so common in activities like this, but so rare in the business world?
Every Step, Every Note, Every Motion — Perfectly in Sync
To compete at this level, each band member has to hit every mark. No exceptions and no room for error. If you want to win at a high level, you must:
- Play their music with exact pitch, tone, and timing
- March with precise foot placement, body angles, and visual expression
- Stay aligned not only musically, but physically, and emotionally, with 299 other people
- Execute feedback from peers and adults within minutes and hours, not weeks
In the world of marching band, perfection is the standard. Not because they’re forced to do it, but because they choose to. Every student knows their role matters. If one person misses a cue, it doesn’t just impact them. It shifts the entire formation. It affects everyone else’s timing. It throws off the story. It can mean the difference between making the top 15 schools in the finals or going home after prelims.
There’s no room for ego. No one’s freelancing. They’re accountable to the whole.
It’s actually quite impressive to watch.
In Business? We Drift
Now compare that to most corporate teams. I’ve worked at more than one company in my career, been on more than one team or project that just feels “off.” Too many meetings with no agendas and no prescribed outcomes. Lots of talking about the same issue with no resolution. That’s not how teams work. Not how high-performing teams work. Tell me you haven’t experienced at least one of these in your career.
- Feedback is often avoided because it feels “personal”
- Individuals optimize for their career, not the collective outcome
- Teams focus on visibility, not clarity
- We celebrate business, not precision
I tend to come back to this book every so often and re-listen to it (I’m big into audiobooks) by Patrick Lencioni. In his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni writes one of the most common breakdowns in business is the avoidance of accountability. Teams are “so concerned about not jeopardizing relationships that they fail to hold one another accountable for behaviors and performance.”
In a marching band, that mindset would get you benched — or worse, it would tank the performance for everyone else. In business, somehow, we let it slide. This is not only a team problem, but a leader problem. Be it a team lead, a VP, or CEO. Accountability for your performance is not only a “you” problem, but a “leader” problem.
The Competitive Edge: Peer-Driven Accountability
One of the most powerful things about watching my son’s band wasn’t just the talent; it was the trust. Trust from their peers and directors. Trust that they have a shared vision of success.
When you think about your relationships, work or not, feedback is a polarizing experience. These students want feedback. They expect correction. Not to be judged, but to get better. They run the show hundreds of times because they know that mastery lives in repetition. They own their mistakes and fix them in real time. They cheer each other on. They give each other side-eye when someone’s off tempo. It’s not personal. It’s the price of performing at a high level.
And guess what? It works.
According to a New York Times Magazine article about Google’s quest to build the perfect team, teams with strong peer accountability outperform others significantly — not just in output, but in innovation and resilience. As the article notes, “teams that hold one another accountable shift from a culture of individualism to one of performance.”
In other words:
Accountability isn’t about control. It’s about commitment. And it is about growth.
What Business Leaders Can Learn (and Do)
Here’s the kicker: nobody forced these 300 students to practice for 20+ hours a week, run drills in the rain, or take critiques from instructors, judges, and each other. They did it because they were part of something bigger than themselves.
If we want that kind of energy in the workplace, we have to create the environment for it:
- Set shared standards, not just individual metrics
- Normalize real feedback — not just during annual reviews
- Design for interdependence, not silos
- Reward collective wins, not just individual contributions
- Model it from the top — if leadership avoids accountability, so will everyone else
High-performing teams aren’t born. They’re built. They’re rehearsed. They’re led. And above all, they’re committed to the mission, not just the meeting. And honestly, we need to train our managers, team leads, and executives to deliver feedback better. To create a culture of positive outcomes from feedback, not fear of a bad performance review. That’s not an easy task. It takes leaders, of all kinds, to step up and earn the respect of their teams, so they know that when feedback is delivered, it is for a greater purpose, not criticism.
From Field to Meeting to Zoom Call to the Boardroom
There’s a moment in every great marching band show where the music swells, the formation locks in, and the crowd goes silent — not because they’re bored, but because they’re in awe.
You don’t need a brass section or a color guard to create that kind of moment in your business. You just need alignment. Practice. Trust. Precision. And a shared desire to perform at a high level.
If 300 high school students can do it, what’s stopping your team?
