The story still hasn't ended. The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become pretty good friends and they did some thinking together. Both realized that the last race could have been run much better. So they decided to do the last race again, but to run as a team this time. They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam across with the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the hare again carried the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together. They both felt a greater sense of satisfaction than they'd felt earlier. The moral of the story? It's good to be individually brilliant and to have strong core competencies; but unless you're able to work in a team and harness each other's
core competencies, you'll always perform below par because there will always be situations at which you'll do poorly and someone else does well. Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership.

There are more lessons to be learnt from this story. Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure. The tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard as he could. In life, when faced with failure, sometimes it is appropriate to work harder and put in more effort. Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different. And sometimes it is appropriate to do both. The hare and the tortoise also learnt
another vital lesson. When we stop competing against a rival and instead start competing against the situation, we perform far better. When Roberto Goizueta took over as CEO of Coca-Cola in the 1980s, he was faced with intense competition from Pepsi that was eating into Coke's growth. His executives were Pepsi-focused and intent on increasing market share 0.1 per cent a time. Goizueta decided to stop competing against Pepsi and instead compete against the situation of 0.1 per cent growth. He asked his executives what was the average fluid intake of an American per day? The answer was 14 ounces. What was Coke's share of that?

Two ounces. Goizueta said Coke needed a larger share of that market. The competition wasn't Pepsi. It was the water, tea, coffee, milk and fruit juices that went into the remaining 12 ounces. The public should reach for a Coke whenever they felt like drinking something. To this end, Coke put up vending machines at every street corner. Sales took a quantum jump and Pepsi has never quite caught up since. To sum up, the story of the hare and tortoise teaches us many things. Chief among them are that fast and consistent will always beat slow
and steady; work to your competencies; pooling resources and working as a team will always beat individual performers; never give up when faced with failure; and finally, compete against the situation - not against a rival.

A comment:  
courtesy: Amir Bootwala
I.    read this story and was very much impressed by it. If you go through the story, especially the last section, there is a very important lesson for us the MUSLIMS. The problem we are facing today is that the whole of electronic and print media is against us. so, however much hard we work, or however much good efforts we make or how much positive our attitude we make, it is simply ignored by media, where as a single crime or an act of offence committed by a Muslim is attributed to Islam. So, what could be a solution to all this. Well, in the light of this story, there are some solutions which can be achieved if thought deeply about it:
We should not take media as our rival, rather the situation. What we must understand that masses of people use television or newspapers as source of information in present times. And most of news channels or leading international newspapers are biased against us today. So, instead of taking them as rivals, we should work hard and make all efforts to try and change the medium of access. For example, internet can be a possible alternative. On the net Alhamdulillah very good Islamic websites and Islamic groups of all taste are available. from Islamic shariah, Qur'anic teachings, Hadith knowledge, Dawah work to news sites with Islamic perspective, everything is easily available, what we need today is to promote the use of internet among Muslim masses. so that we can access to Islamic news recourses instead of non-Muslim biased media. this is the area where we should work very hard and put our utmost efforts. if we are able to achieve this insha Allah ,then in the times to come we will be able to marginalize the role of electronic or print media where we have no representation and no choice to see what we want (ie, no good Islamic channels), to the field of internet where everyone is able to represent his or hers view, and people have the choice to see what they want.
 
2.  second important point is that working as a team will always beat individual efforts. consider the example of our group. if each member makes his or her effort individually then they will be able to share their ideas or information within a limited circle only. whereas if any article is approved on the group it can be accessed by more than thousand members daily. and there are different members in this group from different countries, but one thing is common in us all, that is Islam. and our individual nationalities do not hinder us to be a part of this group, rather I have observed that there is a unique sense of brotherhood in all of us. so it is like an international team working for the cause of Islam. what is needed that all Islamic groups working for the cause of Islam should be linked together so that a giant group could be formed, which in it's process slowly but steadily can bring all the Muslims of the world to one common platform paving the way for universal Muslim brotherhood insha  Allah.in this way the ideology of nationalism will become irrelevant itself, and this
false deity will crumble itself without need of any armed revolution insha Allah.