Sebastien Wilcox

We’ve all heard the saying THERE’S NO I IN TEAM. It’s based on the simple premise that a team working together is always more valuable than its individuals working individually. We’ve all heard this saying, we’ve all used this saying, and in one way or another, we’ve all more or less lived it.

But is this saying still relevant? Is there any truth to the fact that “there’s no I in team”?

I wanted to get to the bottom of this. I closely examined the letters in the word TEAM to ensure that this time honoured saying was indeed, free of the letter I. So armed with my reading glasses, I took a deep breath and went into investigative battle. I printed off the word TEAM and sat there staring at it, eager to find discrepancies.

The first letter I came across was T as in TOGETHER, then an E as in EVERYONE, then A as in ACHIEVES and, there on the corner of my eye, I noticed M as in MORE. Then I saw a period. After much self doubt and deliberation, I concluded that the period was being used to end the THERE’S NO I IN TEAM sequence, and therefore was not used as part of the word but more of a punctuational structure.

Now that I had done the grunt work, I too was convinced that teamwork trumped solo work. I was about to lay this investigation to rest when I suddenly made a discovery.

This time, from the other corner of my eye, I saw the E and the M from TEAM. It was as if those two letters were trying to tell me something. Not fully comprehending what they were trying to get at, I rotated those two letters so that M was first, and E second. Then I put the two letters together – like two pompoms – to see what would happen…and then, it happened. I saw ME. I saw ME in the word TEAM! That’s M as in MYSELF and E as in EVERYONE SCREW OFF THIS IS MY MOMENT!

How about that.

The moral of this post? Move over, Sherlock Holmes.