Remember Jeremy Lin? Back in 2014, he made everyone sit up and take notice as the first American-Taiwanese player for the NBA, and he played for the NY Knicks.

Watch his incredible tiebreaking 3 pointer with less than a second to go.

His coach said: “You just watch and you’re in awe. He held it until five tenths of a second left. He was pretty confident that ball was going in, no rebounds , no nothing.”

But what he said, which I loved was “When you win, that solves a lot of problems.”

That’s true at work too. I recently presented to a group of folks who were struggling: they were relatively new, they were getting projects dumped on them, they felt people didn’t understand their value proposition.  The advice I gave them was: “Define what it means to win, and then go after it.”

Defining winning is the most important thing you can do as a leader. People want a win that’s authentic. No one is motivated by the “everyone gets a trophy” approach. Wain Kellum, CEO of Vocalocity has a great quote…”true happiness, especially in a work sense, comes from earned achievement.”

Winning is the best morale booster and retainer of talent around. Make sure you know what it means to win.