If business is sport (and I think it is), few companies are as good at cultivating talent as quiet, non-flashy United Parcel Service. This article gives a glimpse at the machinery behind UPS’s success.

In a nutshell: a few years ago, the company’s younger drivers were failing, so the company invented a new training program: a kind of mini-town where trainees can deeply practice their every move. It’s elaborate (force sensors on handrails, obstacle courses, a “falling machine” where harnessed-up trainees attempt, and fail, to carry packages over slippery floors), and it works brilliantly. UPS is doing exactly what the coaches at Meadowmount, The Shyness Clinic, Spartak or any of the other talent hotbeds are doing: using deep practice to build fast, fluent circuitry.