Woodle considered this line so important that he repeated it twice during his speech and made it the central thesis of his entire address. He had built his career around this principle, going so far as to develop a half-day training course called 'TEAM Training' that he used to communicate pivotal values to his senior managers. The statement might sound like corporate boilerplate, but Woodle meant it as a genuine philosophy of leadership. His TEAM framework — Thinking strategically, Empowering employees, Acting responsively, Making success happen — was designed to create environments where people could do their best work together rather than competing against each other. For Penn State engineering graduates in 2001, entering a technology industry still reeling from the dot-com crash, the emphasis on teamwork over individual brilliance was particularly relevant. The crash had exposed the fragility of companies built around individual genius and venture capital rather than sustainable teams working toward shared goals.