Musings at Altitude

One of my favorite movies of all times is “The Replacements”, starring Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman.  It has all the great themes:

• a group of misfits come together and achieve unbelievable success
• the failure as a player comes back and overcomes his past to be victorious in the end
• the tremendously talented bad guys lose in the end
• the winning quarterback gets the head cheerleader in the end
• the fired coach comes back to lead the team of misfits to victory
• before success comes learning through failure

After watching it again last night, I keyed in for some reason this time on several epiphanal points in the movie:

1. At the end of the first game using the replacement players, with only a few seconds left in the game and his team behind, the coach calls a pass play into the endzone and the quarterback audibles at the line to a run as he reacts to a perceived blitz; the runner ends up being tackled just one yard short of the end zone; the coach runs up to the quarterback and said he called pass and the quarterback said he read blitz; the coach said “you got scared”; the coach got the last word with “winners always want the ball”. 
2. That evening after the game, the team was having its post game blues washed away in a neighborhood bar when the professionals show up to poke fun at the loss and at them; a fight breaks out; the replacements end up in jail, not the professionals, and one of the guys asks why they are the only ones in jail; another guy on the team replies that it’s simple, they are winners; the jail scene ends with the coach bailing them out and saying if it ever happens again they won’t be playing on his team; then he says, “but I sure would have liked to see Martel’s [the pro quarterback] face when he got his ass kicked”; the team bonded after the loss
3. In the locker room the following day, the coach wanted to drill down on the collapse at the end of the game the previous night; he wanted to talk about fear; he asked the players what they fear and after a few joking comments about spiders and bees, the quarterback says “quicksand”; the team quickly agrees that quicksand is a bad thing, but the coach quickly tells them it’s not literal but figurative and asks the quarterback to explain; the quarterback talks about being in the game and one thing goes wrong…then another…then another…and the harder you fight the deeper you sink…like quicksand; the coach reminds all of the players that they’ve been given a second chance and when that chance ends they’ll be going back to their other jobs so they need to make the most of this chance and overcome their fears
4. And finally, in the final game of the regular season, the all pro quarterback crosses the picket line and the replacement quarterback is let go; during the first half of the game, the all pro yells at his team, demeans his team, and concludes during half time that “no one can win with these guys”; the replacement shows up at half time on a whim and says “I can”, and the coach fires the all pro and puts in the game the replacement quarterback; as you might expect, the revived team comes back and wins the game and finds the glory

Each of these four have so many parallels to business, and I could spend all morning now outlining each of them.  But I want to key on one area for each of the four epiphanal moments:

• Winner’s want the ball – I’ve been blessed with working for and with some awesome partners and team members over the years.  One thing stands out in my mind – when things get tough and the fires of business challenge are blazing, the very best always want to be in the fire – they always want the ball.  I’ve known leaders both above and under me that could not be found as a crisis erupted.  Those leaders lost respect of the entire team, because the folks in the fire fully realized that the leaders backed off rather than jumped in.  There is always risk of failure when jumping into the fire because often times even the best of folks can’t put out the flames or win the game.  I think it was Michael Jordan that talked about how many last shots he missed and thus lost the game.  But he’s remember for those shots he took and then won.  Winners always want the ball.
• Bonding follows loss – Not every business plan or every business decision turns out great; in fact, many if not most of them turn out very different than originally planned and thought.  I remember clearly one senior business leader in Europe telling me that he had 27 companies over the years and 26 of them were not successes; but that 1 that was made him a billionaire.  With every loss comes an opportunity for learning.  With every challenge comes an opportunity for bonding.  In every case though, a leader must emerge to facilitate the learning and the bonding.  I once said that “our greatest challenge was success”, because we had this really false sense of how good we were and how great our accomplishment were.  It’s the tough times that define the great teams, and it’s through failure that lifetime bonds are created and cemented.
• Quicksand – As I think back over my business career, I can’t think of a time where only one thing went wrong.  In fact, I can hear my wife’s counsel ringing in my ears that “bad news always comes in three’s”.  She’s pretty accurate with that statement.  When things start going wrong, they tend to keep going wrong.  In sports, coaches call a time out to change the momentum or to make adjustments.  In business, we need to do the same thing when things start going wrong – we need to take a step back, change the line up a little bit, make some offensive and defensive adjustments, and then get back in the business game.  I’ve seen “quicksand” suck down and destroy businesses.  I’ve seen the same for projects.  In all of those cases, the dogmatism of the company or the team and the desperate belief that they were doing things right and should just stick to it sank the company or the project.  The best solution to quicksand is that time out, that reaching out to others for help, and then the avoidance of the path that got you to that point in the first place.
• No one can win with these guys – I do believe that there are teams that face incredible odds to winning in specific situations.  In those cases, having a great coach or a great quarterback may decrease the losses, but probably won’t win a championship.  So many other factors must also be considered to have the championship team.  However, winning isn’t always based on the final score or the ultimate championship, because success can be defined in so many different ways.  I tell business leaders today that “your job is to give us options”.  Those options could be high levels of profitability or a tremendous return on investment or a company that could be consolidated within the family for greater strength and great market competitiveness.  All of those would be considered “wins”, but some of those wouldn’t be considered “the championship”.  Good leaders take the talent they are given and mold them into the best possible team to achieve the best possible results.  And it all starts with communications.  And it includes the bonding that comes from loss, and the climbing out of quicksand that comes from assessing and responding to our fears.  And it ends in winning, at some level, with great joy.

In sports, some are great individual performers and others are great team players.  It’s pretty easy to pick out the great athletes that struggle in a team environment, and it’s also very fun to watch the good but not great athletes that excel in a team environment.  We have so many examples of great teams that don’t seem to have the great individual players. 

Business is no different.  The business teams I enjoy the most are those that bring the passion and excitement of the quest to work with them every day, bond in ways that were unimaginable when they were first introduced, and overcome the numerous setbacks and quicksands that fill their journey…and through it all…they cherish and respect each other, embrace that vision, and achieve success.

That’s nirvana.