Flexability | How March Madness made me think about high-performance teams

I’m loving the final days of March Madness! Are you? While watching all those great teams battling it out, something occurred to me: a great way to get the best out of the people in our business organizations is to view them as a high-performance sports team.

What’s it they always say about the best coaches? They have an “eyes on, hands off” approach.

While the game is on, the team is empowered to make their own in-the-moment decisions, but at the end of every match, the coach gets together with the team and goes through what was done well, and what could have been better. They also make the tough decisions, such as who should be on the court and who should be on the bench.

Business leaders should act like coaches, reviewing each team member’s performance and giving considered feedback on how and where they did well, and where they are missing the mark. If someone has to be benched, that’s the manager’s decision to make.

And, just like an NCAA coach, a business leader should work with their team to plot a game plan for each new project, deciding what success looks like for that particular team and project, and setting out how it can be achieved.

Then the business leader, like the NCAA coach, has to get the hell out of the way and let the team run onto the court and do what they do best, together.

Working with the team, you, as the coach-manager, need to take them on a quest for constant improvement – as a team and individually. Just as a sports team refines its game plan over a season, in a business team the emphasis should be on learning with each project, or each part of a large project, so that the team can reach peak performance.

The famous story of the Ritz-Carlton allowing its staff to spend up to $2 000, without having to ask for approval, to resolve or satisfy customer requests comes to mind here. An excellent manager gives their team the space to make their own decisions in the moment. It’s the result that’s important – for the hotel it’s customer satisfaction and loyalty, for an NCAA team it’s a win. What is it for you and your team?

There’s another aspect to ensuring that teams, whether in sport or in the workplace, perform at their best – and that’s building cooperation between the members. In an increasingly diverse workplace, that can be complicated, but it’s entirely doable.

Take a leaf out of Bank of America’s book. The bank resolved its high employee turnover with one simple solution: it let teams take lunch breaks at the same time, something it had previously discouraged.

After three months, the bank saw staff were handling calls 23% faster and that team cohesion was up 18% – together translating into $15-million extra for the company.

The secret to a team is that the sum is larger than the parts. While there may be superstars in a team, every individual’s actions are vital to the final score.

And now we must get ready for the Paris Olympics.