Conscious of how their performance has peaked and troughed so far in 2014, the All Blacks are determined to not become a boom and bust team.
Awful at Eden Park in their opening test of the year, they bounced back in Dunedin with an improved effort. Brilliant in Hamilton the following week, they were awful again in Sydney only to respond with another brilliant performance at Eden Park on Saturday.
It's a pattern they don't want to continue. The challenge they have set themselves is to be able to consistently back-up good performances with good performances. That was the key to their perfect season in 2013 - throughout the Rugby Championship they performed at or close to their potential.
Random spikes and falls in the performance graph have become a major bug-bear for both coach Steve Hansen and captain Richie McCaw. When the former took over as head coach he challenged the senior players to see that as something they had to tackle head on.
McCaw was in full agreement as he too is adamant the greatest challenge in sport is eliminating those fluctuations: that the mark of a truly great side; of truly great athletes and leaders, is to be able to consistently produce intense, dynamic performances.
"We can't leave it to the coaches to give us the kick up the arse to et that sort of performance out," was hooker Dane Coles' succinct observation about future motivation.