Roger Federer won 20 Grand Slam singles titles and, as reported in Seth Goldstrom’s September 2026 McKinsey report, roughly 80 percent of his matches. Yet Federer said he won only 54 percent of the points he played. The figures, cited through the report from Federer’s 2024 Dartmouth commencement address, offer a useful lesson: an outstanding overall performance can include many setbacks.
Tennis turns on points, games, and sets, not on winning every exchange. Federer’s 54 percent is four percentage points above an even split. That comparison is not a formula for achievement, nor does it show that he improved from a 50 percent baseline. It does show why one lost point, or one disappointing moment at work, does not describe an entire performance.
Goldstrom’s McKinsey report, “Winning: What the Best Athletes, Teams, and Coaches Do Differently,” presents eight disciplines drawn from conversations with elite athletes, championship coaches, and team executives. It is an edited transcript, not a measured study of business outcomes. The report gives no interview sample size or comparison group, and it does not establish that the full framework produces specific business results. Its value is in the ideas and questions readers can apply to their own work.
Turn meaningful goals into daily work
The first discipline is to define a goal that matters enough to guide everyday decisions. A useful goal is more than an aspiration. Put it in observable terms: What result would count as progress? Who benefits? When will you review it?
A clear goal makes priorities easier to explain and choices easier to assess. If the intended result is more dependable service, for example, a team can identify what reliable service means, who it serves, and when it will assess progress. This is an application of the report’s ideas, not an example of a measured result in the report.
A goal also needs an accountable plan. Goldstrom distinguishes daily activities from performance measures and eventual results. Completing a task records activity. A change in how well the work is done offers evidence of effectiveness. Keeping those categories separate helps teams avoid confusing effort with progress.
The report also describes cyclist Kristen Faulkner’s T-shaped approach: build competence across the essential capabilities, then develop a particular strength. Applied to a team, that means covering the skills needed to deliver the work while also recognizing where a distinctive capability could contribute. A plan can then connect responsibilities, regular actions, and measures to the result the team is pursuing.
Match roles and feedback to the work ahead
Teams need to understand which capabilities their strategy requires. The roles most important to future priorities may not be the same ones that mattered most in the past. That makes role clarity a practical leadership task: identify the contribution needed, determine who owns it, and consider what training, resources, or support would help.
Improvement should also have a clear purpose. Goldstrom’s framework asks teams to look for a meaningful advantage tied to their goal, rather than adopt a new method or technology simply to show activity. A focused trial can be modest: clarify a handoff, adjust a recurring process, or improve how a team prepares for a demanding task. State what the change is meant to improve and decide how to review it.
Timely performance information helps a team respond while a change can still matter. Looking beyond an overall average to individual cases and departures from expectations can reveal problems that a summary figure hides. The information is useful only if someone is responsible for reviewing it and can test a reasonable adjustment.
For instance, an illustrative service team might meet its average response-time target while particular customers experience repeated delays. Reviewing those cases could help the team locate where follow-up is getting stuck. The team could assign a responder, test one change, and check whether it helped. This hypothetical example illustrates an application of the framework, not a finding in Goldstrom’s report.
Make routines sustainable
Sustained work depends on more than determination. Goldstrom discusses preparation that reduces friction, such as setting up what is needed in advance. Teams can use the same principle: make the next useful action easier to begin by clarifying the task, preparing materials, and removing avoidable obstacles.
Enjoyment also has a place in a serious routine. It can make repeated effort more sustainable, alongside shared plans and progress that create opportunities for encouragement and accountability. The practical question is not how to make every task entertaining, but how to build routines people can return to without relying on occasional bursts of effort.
The report favors consistent work over sporadic extraordinary sessions, while cautioning against treating every day as a maximum-intensity day. Faulkner’s discussion of choosing when to press and when to recover reinforces that balance. Recovery is not a rejection of ambition. It is one consideration in maintaining a routine over time.
Leaders shape the conditions surrounding daily work. Realistic schedules, clear priorities, prepared resources, and recognition of specific progress can support consistency. So can the willingness to adjust the routine when it repeatedly proves difficult to sustain.
Stay adaptable and seek useful coaching
Goldstrom summarizes six recurring attitudes in the conversations: perseverance, focus on controllable actions, adaptability, positivity and gratitude, balanced judgment, and curiosity with a willingness to learn. Together, they point to persistence with judgment. Continuing toward a meaningful goal does not require repeating an approach that is not working. It can mean examining what happened, changing the method, and focusing on the next action within reach.
Coaching supports that learning when feedback is candid, specific, and grounded in care for the person’s progress. A rating offers an assessment at a point in time. Coaching helps someone understand what to try next and includes follow-up on how that adjustment is going. Trust matters because honest feedback is easier to use when the recipient understands that the person giving it is invested in their development.
A proposed 30-day application
The following checklist is a proposed application of the report’s ideas, not a program tested or evaluated in the report.
- Week 1: Define one observable result and a review date. Record your starting position.
- Week 2: Begin the routine. Track the actions and one outcome measure. Remove one recurring obstacle.
- Week 3: Review the results with someone you trust. Test one adjustment.
- Week 4: Compare results with your starting position. Keep useful practices, revise what did not help, and recognize specific progress.
Sustained excellence is not a promise of uninterrupted success. It is a way to give ambition structure: define the result, organize the work, notice what the evidence says, and adapt with support. Choose one result worth pursuing, schedule the next recurring action, and review the evidence with someone invested in your progress.
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Sources
- McKinsey & Company, “Winning: What the Best Athletes, Teams, and Coaches Do Differently,” Seth Goldstrom, September 2026.
- Roger Federer, 2024 Dartmouth commencement address, as cited in the report.
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