In a world that loves chocolate ice cream, becoming relevant with vanilla creates challenges. But add chocolate chips, raspberry, or coffee flavoring, and you matter.
Organizations, whether sports teams or businesses, seek to matter...to develop a sustainable competitive advantage. They need a "why" (overarching purpose) and a platform and process of leadership and execution. What intermediate steps help create the desired "end state"?
Superior Perspective. The 'ice cream' example gets extended into a variety of ice cream products, different flavors and iterations. "Gelato" has moved from Italy to the mainstream of the warehouse store shelves. "Positionless basketball" and "3 and D" get more traction daily. Ideas have to move to insights and action. At the end of the classic movie, "The Pistol", coach Maravich envisions the evolution of basketball to transition and entertainment. Last season, 7-footers took more three point shots than all 7-footers had taken in the prior thirteen seasons...combined. The 'stretch four' isn't an opportunity, it's an obligation in today's game.
Step back and think about our organization and process.
Superior Relationships. How we add value is the crux of our daily task. In the NBA, it's transforming an eight million dollar player into a twenty-million dollar player. It's helping to reinvent players. Evan Turner quintupled his salary with the help of Brad Stevens. But we have to add value to get the buy-in required to become transformational with players and teams. We have to ask about players' hopes and dreams and help them "know what they don't know". But we also must "know what we know", teach it effectively, and share it freely and abundantly. We need to be visible, provide both instruction and feedback, and extend our roles as moralists, jurists (playing time), and philosophers.
As players get value, they provide "high value reciprocity" by improving individual and team play. Paraphrasing Papa John, "Better ingredients, better play."
Superior Impact. In business, effective execution drives sales, profits, and earnings. In basketball, quality shows up as more consistent possessions, and improved metrics such as shooting percentage differential, fewer turnovers, better rebounding differential, and free throw appearances. But that is secondary to developing more disciplined, mature, self-motivated, humble, and grateful players.
Do players enjoy the experience and become better on and off the court? Are they spending their time or investing it? Do they share the ball and work to help each other every day at practice? Are they becoming better leaders in their community?
There's nothing wrong with chocolate ice cream. But I enjoy transforming vanilla into a myriad of flavors.
*Some concepts borrowed from Matter: Move Beyond the Competition, Create More Value, and Become the Obvious Choice by Peter Sheahan and Julie Williamson, Ph.D.