While reading the article about Appex Corporation, I was able to relate to similar issues that they faced. Life is all about finding a system that works for you. However, just because a system works for one person or organization does not mean that it will work for everyone. Shikhar Ghosh, the CEO of Appex, went through trial and error with different strategies and structures before finding one that works well for Appex. Over the past three years, I feel like the University of Illinois Track and Field team has adjusted to different structures as well. During my freshmen year here as a pole vaulter, the coaching staff was a bit chaotic. There seemed to be no structure of any sort. First off, the track team is already divided into a few groups, such as the sprinters, throwers, distance runners, and jumpers. Within my group, the jumpers, we had about eight of us. We would show up to practice everyday at 3:30pm and not know what our workout was or which coach we were working with, whether is was our head coach, conditioning coach, or pole vaulting coach. We didn’t know who to go to with issues or who was in charge of us. Some days we practiced with one coach and the next day it was a different coach. None of their workouts were in sync and things just seemed a bit out of control. However, after a few of us talked to the head coach, who was ultimately in charge, at the end of the year and we all agreed that some things needed to be changed. At the start of my sophomore year, I definitely noticed a change. Our conditioning coach was let go and my group worked only with our pole vaulting coach for the entire year. We rarely even spoke with or saw our head coach anymore. The different groups throughout the team didn’t see each other during the day anymore, and between the fifty-five people on the team, I probably only knew half of them. However, by separating into the different divisions, our head coach was able to focus more on the strategic direction of the team and what needed to be done in order to be successful. He definitely didn’t know everything that went on in each group, but we were able to get better without him running the program by himself. We reported to our pole vaulting coach, and then he reported to our head coach as much as possible. This team structure was not perfect by any means, but it did get the job done successfully. Later on, we sat down again with our head coach and evaluated the structure of the team. We like the result we were getting, but we did not enjoy that the team was not a close-knit group. We didn’t know how the people in other groups were performing and that was the one thing we wanted to change. Going into this year, we are still more of a divisional structure. We still have our own groups that we practice with and our own coaches. However, we have more team meetings to keep up on everyone’s progress. We also arrange outside activities for the team, such as tailgating, as a way to get to know each person better. Having fifty-five people on a team takes awhile to get to know everyone but this year has started off in a very positive manner. Just because the divisional structure works well for our program does not mean it works for all other track programs. The same applies to organizations. As the Appex article discussed, the divisional structure worked okay for them, but the sharing of resources became a serious issue. Ghosh was smart enough to try different structures for Appex, but to me, he was even smarter by recognizing what was working and what wasn’t and being willing to change. Every person in the world is unique just as every organization is unique, so it up to leaders to find what works best and the employees to share their wisdom.