Nike may have ridden the "Just Do It" advertising campaign to success, but that slogan is not the way to succeed in business.

Sports teams --and all businesses -- perform at their best when they understand how what they do changes people's lives, according to Don Yaeger, a best-selling sports author and motivational speaker.

"Your team plays differently when it plays with a 'why', when it understands their greater and grander purpose," Yaeger said Monday during a general session at 2015 XChange Solution Provider in Dallas.

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Yaeger's work as a Sports Illustrated editor and contributor to The Wall Street Journal sports section allowed him to examine what makes some teams great while other teams falter.

Yaeger pointed to the U.S. men's national basketball team, which hit rock bottom just a decade after the Dream Team took the world by storm during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

Despite having the best players in the world, the team was rudderless and sputtered to a sixth-place finish at the 2002 FIBA World Championships and lost by 19 to Puerto Rico during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

The disappointing results led USA Basketball to do some soul-searching and ultimately taskedDuke University coaching legend Mike Krzyzewski with turning the team around.

Krzyzewski did that in part by giving the team a series of "feel-it" moments, Yaeger said, under the belief that players would give of themselves at a different level if they saw themselves as part of something bigger.

Coach K had USA Basketball stay with active duty military in Korea for three days prior to the 2006 FIBA World Championships in Japan, brought in Wounded Warriors to start practices and give pregame speeches, and arranged for military swearing-in ceremonies to occur during the halftime of the team's games.

The military moments were capped off in 2012 by a visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where the team placed a wreath of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider (an honor normally reserved for members of the military and foreign heads of state) and spoke with a soldier who had lost the rest of his troop in Afghanistan.

The team has since gone 49-1, won two Olympic Gold medals, and is favored to win the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

The need for "feel-it" moments can be applied to organizations outside sports as well, Yaeger said, noting how medical device maker Medtronic invites families to speak each year at the company's annual public meeting about how Medtronic's products have touched their lives.

Similarly, the Make-a-Wish Foundation board of directors begins each day of its quarterly meetings by having a family sit down to talk or watching a video about the role the nonprofit organization has played in the life of a particular child.

"Great teams have a purpose that is greater than returning profit to shareholders," Yaeger said.

NEXT: Giving Workers A Deeper Sense of Purpose