The very first intercollegiate sport? Not football. Not basketball. Not baseball, soccer or lacrosse. In fact, not a game based on playing with a ball of any size or shape. It was rowing.

It dates back to 1852, when oarsmen from Harvard and Yale challenged each other to a race across Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Thus began an annual tradition that was repeated on June 7, 2025. Harvard and Yale competed once again, this time on the Thames River in New London, Conn.

We have launched this discussion because, in a 62-foot rowing shell with eight oarsmen plus a coxswain, we think there’s a striking parallel to a competitive service and maintenance team in an electrical contracting firm.

Our thinking was inspired as, not long ago, we stood on the bank of a river watching a crew race. Soon afterward, we came across a copy of “The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown. That, of course, led us to streaming the George Clooney movie based on it. 

It’s the true story of the University of Washington Huskies rowing team that overcame the odds in the middle of the Great Depression and earned their way to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. There they surprised the world by defeating their German opponents by inches. When the official results of the photo finish were announced, Americans thousands of miles away sitting by the radio jumped up and cheered in delight. Adolf Hitler, who was watching in person from the grandstand, petulantly stomped away.

While spectators stand on a shoreline cheering and sleek racing shells knife through the water in perfect synchronization, the crew creates an impression of being interchangeable parts in a miraculous fusion of man and machine. Despite that illusion of complete uniformity, rowers hold different and important roles, depending on where they are seated.

The oarsman in the bow seat (seat one) must be strong and capable of consistently “pulling a perfect oar” to avoid steering the boat off course. Oarsman two, in front of the bow seat, helps maintain that true direction.

The rowers in seats three, four, five and six—commonly known as “the engine room”—are the biggest and strongest. Their technique is important, but it’s the power of the thrust they produce that is most valuable.

The oarsman in seat seven is in a hybrid role that requires the strength of a member of the engine room and the most coordination with the eighth seat.

Seat eight, the “stroke,” sits face-to-face with the coxswain, who dictates the speed of the oars in pulls per minute. Together, the stroke and coxswain set the pace.

Rowing coaches constantly experiment with the effects of switching oarsmen back and forth into, and sometimes out of, the seating order. Service managers have their own version of this exercise, when they attempt to match service electricians to the job requirements and customer preferences.

Hence, in both rowing and wiring, a winning team requires good management at the top, coordination within the team, an appropriate pace and an engine room. Each member of a winning service team must back up their role with individual leadership. Reminiscent of management expert Jim Collins’ advice about “getting the right people on the bus” and “getting the wrong people off the bus,” a rowing coach has to get the right oarsman into the boat to begin with and into the right seats before the race.

Similarly, the right seats must perform as a team. In the 19th century, products were seen as high quality if they were produced by skilled craftsmen seated at a bench in a shop precisely copying a pattern in front of them. 

But in the rapidly growing United States, there was a strong movement toward the development of interchangeable (identical) parts—a foundation to the development of mass-marketing of goods of every kind. 

Customers began to see value in consistency instead of handcrafting. That philosophy has since spread to the delivery of services. Hence, a contractor with a cadre of electricians and technicians who arrive in fleet vehicles with a uniform appearance and follow a disciplined routine in their service delivery—projecting the notion of a “brand”—are regarded as more professional than those who do not. Savvy service managers create a team’s identity, then plug electricians and technicians into the right positions—just like a rowing coach.

AHHA / STOCK.ADOBE.COM