Here's a slide from a Powerpoint presentation by Kirk Wakefield about Good to Great:
Whether coach or player, we face situations where the status quo presents an insurmountable obstacle. Collins tells us to face the brutal reality. Kevin Eastman says it slightly differently, "#$%& it ain't working."
Eastman follows that with possibilities, "Do it harder, do it better, change personnel, and finally change strategy." Assuredly, we need to recognize when course corrections become necessary.
When I was a high school player, we were 8-1, facing the three-time defending state champion in our gym. We lost a hard-fought game 70-68, primarily because we struggled against their press. After the game, there was a forty-five-minute 'lesson' with a lot of soul searching. Coach Lane remarked, "There's only one reason you lost this game because their shirts said "Lexington". They're not the better team and you won't ever lose to them again." Coach confronted two brutal realities - we needed to handle the press better and we didn't fully believe in ourselves.
After that, we practiced breaking the press with 'advantage-disadvantage', first with five-on-seven without dribbling, then with dribbling added back.
Later that season, at 15-3 we traveled to Lexington for a rematch, pinning a seventeen point defeat on the defending titlists, handling their press easily. And a few weeks later in the final rematch, we won the Division I sectional championship in Boston Garden against that same team, 56-55 in overtime.
Coach could have massaged our damaged egos and shown us unconditional love despite a flawed performance. But he challenged us and demanded more because he was unwilling to accept less. A "performance-focused, feedback-rich" harsh message and deliberate practice (process) changed results.
If you have the right people on your team, the right communication style, and the competence to grow your people, confronting the brutal reality gives you a chance at success. But that downstream approach still requires that you 'hired tough', built trust, and have the competence and leadership to recognize and solve problems.
A couple of months short of forty-three years later, I think the lesson was worth hearing.
