Winning Culture: #2 Commitment

The first step of developing team culture is about developing vision. But for the vision to be reached, a player needs commitment. All of us have heard the phrase, “talk is cheap.” Vision can be the “talk part”, while commitment is the “action part.” Coaches often say, “Don’t tell me, show me.”

The first season I was coaching girls basketball, in the fall I chaperoned a fan bus to Danville. We stopped in Champaign (where the girls tourney was at that time) to eat. One of the future players said to me, “We’re going to be playing in Champaign this year.” Obviously the player had a vision, but I had no confidence in the vision because they really had not at that point had an off-season commitment.

Stephen Covey in his book “First Things First,” deals with this idea. His message is:

1-   Determine your priorities.

2-   Let your priorities determine your actions.

3-   Your actions should be showing your priorities.

Winning Culture: #1 Vision

Motivational experts talk about the importance of goals. There are various versions of “you have to see it to achieve it.”

To be successful, players and teams must have a “vision” of what they want to be, and what they want to become. Often our vision is inspired by a role model or the excitement of an event we witness. It is kind of like, “We want to be like Mike.”

Team Culture- Pyramid

The most famous pyramid in basketball was John Wooden's Pyramid of Success. For many it is easier to grasp something when we see it in a picture vs just a paragraph. The major concept of Wooden's pyramid was that you need to do some basic things first- their is a foundation on which everything else rests.

One season, I tried my hand at making our own pyramid. While Wooden called it a pyramid of success, I would say it is also a pyramid for building a winning culture. The team formulated their beliefs of what would make for a successful season. I took their words and put them into the following drawing:

 

                                                                       

Team Culture- Words

Jon Gordon has had several very good motivational books. In one of his books, he talks about the power of words. He encourages people to pick out one word which will be the person's focus for a day, a week, or a year. People should pick out a word which captures what a person wants to be about. The concept is that the mind needs our focus to be simplified. Everyone can remember key words which will be their focus.

We ask our teams to formulate goals for the season. One season, we asked them to do two things in putting their goals together:

1- Make their goals focused on the process not the outcomes. In other words, don't put down the wins or championships you wish to attain. List what you need to do, or what you need to be-  to be successful.

2- Try to keep it simple. Pick out 8 words, which capture what you want to be as a team.

Team Culture- Building Winning Culture

Earlier this week I was listening to former college football coach, Rick Neuheisel. His conversation was about new coaches taking over programs this year in college football. He commented the most important job of a first year coach is not X/O's or strategy. The most important job is to "reshape the culture" of their program. His feeling was if a program is going to have long term success, it will be a result of a strong culture.

The other point he made was culture does not just happen, culture is built. And for a culture to be successfully built into a winning culture, it is a process. Just like you build skills in a sport with purposeful daily commitment, you build culture with a purposeful daily commitment. It doesn't just happen!

Here is an example of a foundation of values to build a culture:

Team Culture- Passion & Priorities

This morning, I was listening to discussions about Jimmy Butler wanting to be traded from the Minnesota Timberwolves. I don't know the rumors are true or untrue, but the discussion about the possible trade or move in free agency were interesting.

Multiple "experts" on ESPN kept coming back to similar reasons for Butler's apparent unhappiness with the Wolves. The common theme was that Butler did not like the attitude or behavior of teammates on the Wolves. One player was described as having a "lack of passion," he was just playing for the money according to a source. And another significant player was described as "poor priorities." The feeling was that this player was much more invested in personal stats than in winning games. The conclusion was that Butler saw these players who were significant to the team and the teams success, but who had major character flaws. And the experts went onto say that Butler felt, "you can't win championships with players who lack passion (heart) or who have selfish priorities." The point was that no matter what the talent level of a team- the team's culture will determine their ceiling!

After listening to this, I was reminded about a book about North Carolina women's soccer program. The soccer program may be the most successful program in NCAA history. In the book, Coach Dorrance talked about building team culture. Here is part of his thoughts:

North Carolina Women's Soccer Team's Core Values

by Anson Dorrance, Head Coach

There are certain principles of behavior that produce extraordinary results.  People who make a living from studying what makes organizations excellent usually boil their consistent success down to the group living a powerful set of core values.

Every year when I meet with the rising seniors each week in the spring our discussions center around our core values and what they can do to live them and how they can help drive everyone within the culture to live them as well. Human nature being what it is, some leaders embrace the personal and public challenge of our discussions and some don't; just like some people within the culture live the core values and some just don't have the strength.    

We need them to embrace and live what we have collected below because our culture and core values are only as strong as our leaders and what they endorse and drive as acceptable behavior.   So over the past 25 years, since our program began in 1979, what are the best elements of our tradition? What are our core values?