The 2004 Pistons won the NBA championship against all odds. They were a defensive powerhouse, and while they didn’t have a superstar, the individual players complemented one another like the stars in a constellation. As a result, they beat a Lakers team that had four Hall of Fame players including two top-10 players of all time, Shaq and Kobe, in their prime.1
Said differently, while they didn’t have the star talent that the Lakers did, the composite strength of the players on the Pistons exceeded that of the Lakers, resulting in one of the most unlikely NBA champions of all time.2
Leadership principle: The path to win in volatility is to increase the composite strength of your team.
Most indications suggest that volatility and a potential recession are on the horizon in 2023. Given that, senior leaders have shifted their focus to strategy evolution, scenario planning, and aggressive cost containment.
Under these high uncertainty, stress-filled circumstances, leaders often resort to heroic leadership instead of conductor leadership. In fact, one of the first things to get de-prioritized is investment (money, but more importantly time) in developing our teams.
In these situations, the tyranny of the urgent often supersedes the sustained, longitudinal focus required to truly impact the skill and mindset growth of an individual.
This turns out to be a costly mistake for at least two reasons.
First, the skills required to beat the odds during volatility are rarely found in one leader. By neglecting the opportunity to enhance the composite strength of a team, you're hoping and praying one person's power (your power) will be enough.
Second, it can contribute to years of setbacks due to undesired departures and a weakened succession bench. In this current moment, this risk is even greater because many leaders are exhausted from the unrelenting turbulence of the last three years.
So why focus on composite strength when developing your team?
It’s much harder for one leader to grow in 8 areas than for 8 individuals to improve their proficiency in one area each.
That said, leaders need to identify the right “one thing” for each person on their team to develop.3 The focus areas need to be linked to the evolving strategic priorities (especially in times of turbulence) as well as the organizational culture and context.
For example, one leading company determined that there were three critical capabilities required to deliver on their strategic priorities: product launch at scale, digital enablement and efficient capital/resource allocation. The CEO and CHRO decided to take a “portfolio view” in terms of how they develop their leadership team. What this meant in practice is that for each leader, they identified one of these critical capabilities as an area of growth for the year based on their current strengths and the needs of their role.
Since resources and time are so scarce in moments of volatility, taking a “portfolio lens” of talent development in order to increase the composite strength of the team yields the highest return on invested time.
Take Action: Practical and Proven Steps
Translate the organizational strategy AND culture into a 3-part scorecard: 1) set of 5-7 business outcomes (relevant to your team), 2) 3 most critical strategic capabilities needed to achieve these outcomes and 3) 5 leadership behaviors. This 3-part scorecard is called your organizational or team scorecard.4
Rate the proficiency of each individual on your team on each of the dimensions in the organizational scorecard (Distinctive/Proficient/Still Developing). Make sure the rationale for your rating is grounded in concrete data/examples (not your feeling or perception). The simplest visual way to do this is to create a table with the rows as the dimensions of the scorecard and the columns as the names of the people on your team.
Prioritize 1-2 development areas per person (i.e., the “one thing”) where you need them to grow and become more effective in order to deliver on the scorecard. Instead of grasping at generic leadership traits or technical skills, this exercise will ensure that you are focusing each individual on your team on developing in an area that is well-suited to the context.
In next week’s Friday reflection, we’ll start to hone in on the “how” of supporting your team to develop new skills and/or mindsets. Hint: Facilitated training on its own is often the most entertaining but is rarely an effective tool to drive development.
Reflect: Some Questions to Consider
Have I been investing sufficiently in my team’s development given the prevailing volatility?
Based on the scorecard and my evaluation of the team, what is the “one thing” to focus on for each individual to increase the composite strength of the team relative to the scorecard?
When can I have initial conversations with each member of my team on their “one thing”?
First, anyone that debates whether Shaq and Kobe are top 10 all time can unsubscribe (just kidding…please stay subscribed). Second, yes - I know Karl Malone and Gary Payton were well past their prime, but it doesn’t diminish what this team achieved.
Don’t mistake my admiration for this Pistons squad as disloyalty to the Lakers. I bleed Purple and Gold (the Lakers colors). But there’s something about the way this Pistons team came together and dominated a heralded Lakers team that made me admire them.
This is a lesson that somehow the Lakers front office still has not learned. Don’t even get me started on how we’ve wasted 3 outstanding seasons from LeBron in the twilight of his career. I promise this is my last Lakers footnote. I was on roll and couldn’t help myself.
This exercise requires both deep thinking and iteration. While I describe it in relatively simple terms, many leaders struggle to build an organizational scorecard that is fit-for-purpose. They often end up being too generic or too narrow.
Also, to elaborate on what I mean by each of these elements:
An example of an outcome: “Launch new product in 10 markets on-budget and on-time”
An example of a strategic capability is digital mindset or portfolio management. It can be helpful to define these clearly as well as what great looks like on each dimension.
An example of a leadership behavior is “enterprise mindset.”