How do you define culture? I define it as how individuals relate to each other and an organization to seek trust and high performance. Shorten it to communication and collaboration. Strong culture won't always win. High performance needs talent, teaching, and growth.
Howard Schultz reminds us to hire for domain expertise and values. The program director probably won't edit video, assemble the playbook, handle player development, and run the training room.
Mike Smith and Jon Gordon wrote, You Win in the Locker Room First. The SlideShare summarizes big ideas.
In The Heart of Coaching, Thomas Crane shares a favorite phrase, "performance-focused, feedback-rich to sustain competitive advantage." Positive culture sculpts an edge.
Schultz advises a periodic culture audit. Starbucks had problems with racial profiling and literally closed down their operations for half a day for retraining. He said, “We realize that four hours of training is not going to solve racial inequity… but we have to start the conversation.” Talk is a start.
Steve Kerr emphasizes mentors, mindset, and culture. In the Team Building Strategies of Steve Kerr, he discusses joy. "Joy causes you to focus on the journey, not just the end result. It fuels the fires of perseverance in the hard times. Joy enables you to play looser, with more freedom...with more creativity and tenacity."
What sabotages culture? Chuck Daly's "players want 48" - 48 minutes, 48 shots, 48 million. When individual agendas dominate, the wheels fall off the wagon.
Forbes explains three big reasons culture fails - lack of leadership commitment, lack of follow-through on results, and lack of differentiation.
Coaches undermine culture. Bill Parcells checked out mentally from the Patriots before the Super Bowl in 1997, planning his exit to the New York Jets during Super Bowl week. Maybe Green Bay would have won anyway, but Parcells wasn't all in.
Parents undermine cultures, too. In Carl Pierson's, The Politics of Coaching, he describes programs disallowing rising freshmen to enter summer high school programs, as upperclass parents limited competition for their children. The cream rises to the top.
Culture matters at every level. Teams are unstable. Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant teamed to propel the Brooklyn Nets to greater heights. Durant was already injured, Kyrie got injured and conspiracy theory links the Net's Big 3 to Kenny Atkinson walking the plank. "This was the doing of Brooklyn’s “Big Three”… Durant, Irving and DeAndre Jordan."
Are we different? Our daughters' AAU coach, Shawanda Brown, called an excellent player to the sidelines after a selfish play. She said, "That is not how we play." Message sent. She coached hard and brought boys in to practice against the girls. One of her former players, Shey Peddy, played on the Mystics' WNBA champions. Be the difference.
Lagniappe: Are we our best?
Lagniappe 2: Read like Bill Gates.