Leave It Better Than You Found It

Every summer at Saint Mary’s, former players came back to work out with us. Coach Randy Bennett would remind us they’d helped build the foundation we were standing on.

When you start something from scratch, or join really early, you see how much work goes into even a small foundation. Once it works, it’s easy to forget how hard that was.

Same with a team. By the time you join, you can’t see how long it took everyone to figure out what they were supposed to be doing.

There usually isn’t anyone to tell you what’s next. You make the best call you can, see what happens, then make the next one.

A lot of that work is invisible. There’s rarely a moment where you point at something and say, “This is what we built.” It might be a process that works a bit better than before. Someone you hired who later becomes a leader. A mistake you made once so the next person doesn’t have to.

The person who joins on day one and the person who joins five years later can be doing equally important work. They just start from very different places.

That’s fine. They aren’t supposed to feel how hard it was. That’s the point.

Sports are the same. Every team you join already has a history, built by the players and coaches before you. You don’t start from zero, and I don’t think you should want to.

But you’re supposed to add to it. Bring your own ideas. Build on what worked. When you leave, someone else inherits what you changed.

You’re almost always standing on something someone else built, and building something the next person will stand on. That’s true whether you’re a founder or just there for a few years.

Sometimes you need to change something completely. Just understand why it’s there first. The people before you worked with what they knew. The people after you will know things you don’t.

That’s how things get better. You inherit, you learn, you change things and you hand them over.

It’s changed how I think about success too. Part of it is what you get done while you’re there. Part of it is what you leave behind. Did you help someone get better? Did you make something the next person can take further?

You often won’t see the answer. You leave, someone else takes over, and what you built keeps going without you. That’s the best outcome.

They helped build something that kept going after they left. Now they get to watch someone else build on it.

Companies are the same. People join and leave, and the company slowly turns into something different. You don’t have to get everything right to leave a place better than you found it.

Leave it better than you found it.