Jim Collins' landmark book, "Good to Great" includes the "Hedgehog" concept as part of achieving sustainable competitive advantage. The hedgehog relies on simplicity in its survival strategy, rolling up into a ball and revealing a spiny exterior when threatened.
Collins writes: "Those who built the good-to-great companies were, to one degree or another, hedgehogs. They used their hedgehog nature to drive toward what we came to call a Hedgehog Concept for their companies. Those who led the comparison companies tended to be foxes, never gaining the clarifying advantage of a Hedgehog Concept, being instead scattered, diffused, and inconsistent."
The central concepts include simplicity and clarity. These themes are echoed elsewhere, with David Cottrell's "Monday Morning Leadership" espousing "the main thing is the main thing", Bill Walsh the primacy of the 49ers "Standard of Performance", and Don Meyer "mature simplicity."
Extending Collins' analogy further, the great companies chose areas in which they could excel relative to the competition, for which they had great passion, and chose an economic metric for their industry. For basketball, this translates to STYLE OF PLAY, ENTHUSIASM, and POINTS PER POSSESSION (or 100 possessions).
Some programs can find players to fit their style of play, while in developmental programs, we choose the style suited to our athletes. With speed and some talent, our only chance to compete against the BIG and STRONG is to outrun and outexecute in transition.
Enthusiasm starts at practice. Coming to practice should never be a chore, but a chance to "run and have fun" with an uptempo style. Simplicity doesn't exclude a detail-oriented approach. Conditioning need not be dreary, evolving over speed-based drills like Kentucky Layups, Hoiberg speed drill, and Continuous 4 on 4.
If points per possession is the bottom line, minimizing wasted possessions (turnovers) and maximizing 'finishing' with better shooting are the "economic engines" we need to tune. Although we spend at least 30 to 40 percent of practice shooting, I continually worry that's not enough. Getting more players more shots is a constant priority while ratcheting up the competitiveness of the shooting between groups.
The "Good to Great" philosophy doesn't guarantee us anything, but it provides us another framework upon which to layer the details of planning, practice, execution and refinement.