Some of you might have (hopefully) read the blog post that was inspired by Chicago Bulls and the Netflix series The Last Dance. The series final episodes aired today and they were surely worthy of that team. If you ever feel down and need something inspirational to pick you up and restart the engine then rewatch the episode 10 and get your game together.
The metaphors of sports are powerful but they could inspire you only when you have the same goals to reach greatness or you can draw the parallels with your own life and goals. So it is crucial to paraphrase the meaning of what is the game of basketball in your case, what is the title and when the season ends. Unless there are no parallels with your life then they are just great fairy tales.
The season
For the Bulls and the rest of the NBA teams the season lasts from the autumn to the end of May. There is obviously pre-season with some training camps, senior players treating their injuries, new players are drafted etc.
In case of SportID the regular season is also from September to March/April. That is the time when people are most active and we make most of our sales. So obviously these are times when we need play in our top shape. But that does not necessarily mean that the end of March campaign is the logical place where our season ends. We need to define that end for us based on what is the ultimate reachable goal for us in the next 6-12 month timeframe and try reaching that goal with a whole team.
What equals reaching the title for this season? At this point of time I think that securing our next round of funding should be that title. I believe we are getting close to a place where we know what we should do and how we should do it. So, with that funding we could establish a really solid base where we could build something that could grow very big very fast.
The game
Like for professional top-level teams there are 2 game days per week throughout the season. So, what can be metaphorically considered as a game for us is something like a tech team dev sprint or a marketing campaign or getting 200 sales calls done. It is actually quite easy to imagine what is “the game”, but it is much harder to define a win or a loss. More than often I hear someone speaking that I or my team was not able to deliver because this or that thing happened. Someone else from the team dropped a task that was also super essential to do and you needed to help them out. Since that unfortunate thing happened you are going to deliver the next week or the week after that the latest. So, is it a win or a loss?
Well, that depends on the league we are playing. If we are playing the kindergarten league then for sure. You managed to eat your milk soup with vegetables on the third week. Good boy.
But if you play against Reggie Miller or John Stockton then you can be sure that they will have their chances on the game and they will hit their three-pointers in the game if you are not guarding them like a rottweiler. So, to win the game on that level, you need to respond to every single one of those and add at least one successful free throw on top of that to break the tie.
It does not really matter if one of our team-mates was injured in the game (IRL on vacation, on sick-leave or just underperforming). We still need to get our balls into the basket and win the game as a team. It is not good enough if one player gets 60 points and others get zero, because 61 points for the opposite team is not really a hard target to reach.
Do we need to win every single game? No one can do that. To keep the hope for the title alive and get to the playoff we need 50% victories. If we want to gain thae home court advantage, 80% looks a much more hopeful position to win the title. But even that will not guarantee anything until it’s over. The title goes to the winning team of the last game and the game is not over until the final whistle blows.
The team
The players with whom you want to play and win. If we are so nicely speaking in the metaphors of basketball so let’s continue. We are playing in this team, since we have chosen the sport and basketball the team of SportID Bulls J and the team has chosen us, because they needed a good point-guard, a power forward, a coach, a manager, a physiotherapist, a bus driver etc
These people have all come together to form a winning team for that particular season. Next year the needs might be different for a team. Players need to advance their game to take that next step. If either party – the team or the individual in the team – is not happy at any given point, they part their ways. Players might go to another team that is more aligned with their goals, and team picks a replacements that are more aligned with their goals.
Additional reading:
Five stages of leadership is a one-two minute read that summarises Phil Jackson’s understanding of the different stages where teams are in their development cycle. Most teams will never advance to stage 5 and are stuck in the third level.