Leadership drives performance. In The Leader's Bookshelf ADM James Stavridis curates essential books for aspiring leaders.
One is Hope Is Not a Method: What Business Leaders Can Learn from America's Army (1996) - GEN Gordon Sullivan
"A high-performing organization is one that does routine things in an outstanding manner." This reflects the teaching to "do well what you do a lot."
"The challenge for the leader...is to become 'good enough': good enough to seize and exploit developing opportunities...good enough to get it 'about right' in execution." A critical part of success in basketball is to "stamp out bad basketball."
The book favors use of 'case studies' to teach.
Leadership techniques transfer from the military to business (and sports)
- Highly competitive domains
- Changing environment
- Emerging technologies
The Army's six imperatives:
- Quality People
- Leader Development
- Modern Equipment
- Doctrine
- Force Mix
- Training
Teams don't rise to the level of the challenge, they sink to the level of their training.
Whether an Army of 600,000 employees or a team with 15 coaches and players, it's a matter of scale.
Success requires a strong information flow, leaders to analyze and plan courses of action, and a worthy organization to train and execute strategy.
Ask big questions.
- What is happening?
- What is not happening?
- How can I influence the future?
As in medicine, solutions require information gathering, diagnosis, and treatment.
Rules (Where rubber meets road)
- Change is hard.
- Leadership flows from values
- Intellectual leads physical. Think it before we do it.
- Real change means real change.
- Leadership is a team sport.
- Expect surprises.
- Balance the present and the future.
- Better is better (edges).
- Focus on the Future.
- Learn from Doing.
- Grow People
Case Study.
- Change in leadership - Coach Ellis Lane assumes responsibilities at Wakefield High School in 1970...his first varsity job in a broken program.
- He emphasizes sacrifice, teamwork, and 'technology' - grainy black and white film, shot charts, and detailed stats kept by managers. He still believes that rebounds and assists are vital.
- The plan builds around aggressive defense, changing defenses, and pressure built around the 2-2-1 three-quarter court or full court "run-and-jump" (trap and switch).
- At the time. the core young players have played together since 7th grade.
- In 1971 the team wins three games and in 1972 they win eight, including the final three in a league whose top two players (Ron Lee and Bob Bigelow) are future NBA first round choices. Bench players are developing into future starters.
- Player development structure is 'embryonic'. There's no off-season coaching permitted in MA. Players play in a couple of summer leagues and attend Sam Jones's camp together for two weeks.
- The team starts the 1972-3 season erratically, standing at 8-3 before a thirteen game win streak including three postseason upsets propels them into the Division 1 State Semifinals, where they lose by 3. The 21-4 team has lost four games by a total of seven points.
- Coach Lane wins a State Title in 1983 and ultimately earns enshrinement into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame. 1975 grad Roger Lapham earns a D1 Scholarship to Maine. 1983 grad Mark Plansky plays for the National Champion Villanova Wildcats who beat Georgetown. 1977 grad Scott Brown becomes a United State Senator from Massachusetts. Two players from the 1973 team become physicians.
Lagniappe. Practice situational basketball.
Lagniappe 2. Two-person shooting game.