Basketball: What Matters to You? "In Search of Excellence" Applied to Basketball Development

Why do we play...and coach? 

Most don't come to win states or become all-state. Many girls want shared experiences with friends and classmates. Some chase parental dreams. 

Have we asked, "what matters to you?" We haven't asked enough as girls migrate away from basketball and toward volleyball and other sports. "Basketball is a hard sport to master. Unless you're willing to put in the time and effort and have a certain level of athleticism and hand-eye skills, you will not be successful. You will be pushed out of the sport because of what it demands. In volleyball and lacrosse, those barriers are lower."

Let's examine through the prism of In Search of Excellence, the landmark business management work from 1982. Peters and Waterman studied America's top companies and distilled core ideas. 

1. Leadership or Management? It's not one or the other. Relationships and competence blend to form reputations and growth. The top high school programs in our areas earned their status with strong youth programs and outstanding coaches. Three of the top girls programs in Massachusetts included Braintree, Oliver Ames, and Pentucket. All have state championship pedigrees. 

Pentucket has won despite private school raids of their high end talent. They apply and defeat pressure. Their team has skill and execute a variety of sets ranging from horns, to Flex, Iverson and shuffle cuts. 

Here's a BOB they ran in a state tournament game. 

2. Excellence is execution. "All the top companies they surveyed had an action bias." Peters emphasized "MBWA - Management by Walking Around," of United Airlines where leaders personally viewed execution and problems on the front lines. Chunking, breaking issues into smaller pieces was another priority. Envision skill development, strength and conditioning, offseason education, et cetera. Awhile ago, I discussed the potential of a "community coaching summit" to bring local coaches together with goals of collaboration and growth. 

3. Serve the fans. "America’s top companies have a service obsession." Fans want entertainment, effort, and results. Coming out of the pandemic, we have the opportunity to bring fans back. 

4. Innovate. "And autonomy and entrepreneurship are crucial to innovation, because they give employees the opportunity to develop creative ideas that go beyond their job description." How can a high school program innovate? Educators obsess over curriculum and its implementation. Our high school had (has?) a shooting machine which mostly collected dust. Why not a program to develop perimeter shooting with a shooting coach and the shooting machine? 

5. Love your employees. Too often people feel like cogs in the machine not valued participants. I remember an interview with a custodian at NASA, asked about his job, "I helped put a man on the moon." Build pride and performance at every level of the organization. In The Score Takes Care of Itself, Bill Walsh understood that the person answering the phones and striping the field all mattered to the product. 

6. Inspire. Have a purpose. 

Shape a basketball experience that appeals to the most possible participants. It won't be perfect and we won't make everyone happy. Our mantra has been teamwork, improvement, and accountability to each other.

7. Expand via core values. It's impossible to build program integration from silos. Connection and collaboration link to form process and performance. Work together to find and share "best practices." Ask other coaches, "what works for you" and steal great ideas!

8. Stay lean. “Lean staff” means minimal administrative, managerial and executive layers." What would this look like for a community basketball organization? The high school coach would bring leadership and charisma as "Director of Basketball Operations." His or her success would require collaboration with the "Department heads," the subvarsity and youth coaches charged with implementing a system of basketball offense, defense, and skill development. 

Each "department head" needs to ask the "employees" (players and families) "what matters to you?" 

Summary:

• Leadership or management.
• Excellence is execution.
• Serve the fans.
• Innovate.
• Love your employees.
• Inspire.
• Expand via core values. 
• Stay lean. 

Lagniappe. Why do professional athletes get paid? What mattered to Bill Russell?