The top-performing sports and business organizations all operate on the principles that:
1) No team player is irreplaceable.
2) Talent must be shaped in order to build a deep bench at all levels of the organization.
One of the best ways for leaders to do this is to create healthy internal competition. The right kind of competition within an organization can bring out the best performance and growth of A-caliber recruits and high-potential employees.
Additionally, Great Team cultures develop strategies for improving the quality of depth at various positions within the organization. Implementing intense practices or creating a learning environment can enhance both the skill level of individual players or employees and the depth of the team positions.
“Great Teams” can help you learn how to identify your high-potential team members (your “high potentials”) and keep them engaged, as well as how to develop healthy competition within your ranks.
Great Teams in Sports
The Los Angeles Lakers franchise has a storied history, filled with example after example of organizational depth. Over the last half-century, the depth of the Lakers roster was a major factor in the team’s domination. That depth—and the internal competition it drove—was the reason the team’s history includes 21 Hall of Famers and 16 NBA championship titles. The franchise employed a formula for success by building and adding depth around high performers. However, the Lakers’ organizational success began to crumble in 2011, when front-office management decided to build the franchise around a single player—NBA all-star Kobe Bryant.
Though Bryant is tremendously talented, his struggles with injuries directly affected the Lakers’ performance. In 2013 Bryant tore his Achilles tendon, and the Lakers were swept in the first round of the NBA playoffs. The very next year, while Bryant rehabbed from a knee fracture, the Lakers were the third-worst team in the league. The team showed only minimal improvement in 2015, while Bryant nursed an injured shoulder. That year, the Lakers were the fourth-worst team in the NBA.
Despite this history of injuries, Bryant remained the highest-paid player in the NBA for several years running. The Lakers organization made the conscious decision to focus all of its energy and resources on this one superstar, and in so doing, the management limited its salary-cap options. This organizational failure prevented the team from creating depth around Bryant, surrounding him with adequate talent. The Lakers paid a heavy cost for navigating away from a principle that once made the franchise so special—a cost that intensified when Bryant retired at the end of the 2015-2016 season.
“If you don’t have someone on your team who is a capable replacement, then you’re going to have a hole in the picture of your puzzle,” said Jerry West, who would go on to be the team’s general manager for many years after his playing days were over. “If a player leaves and there is no replacement, then the team is not complete. Soon everybody will get frustrated because they can’t find that missing piece. And I think that’s the key to it. A team needs to have enough depth among its good players just in case something goes wrong.”
“One of the most difficult tasks is finding players who are willing to accept who they are and that they are not going to be a starter,” said West. “Those are invaluable to a team.”
The concept that one person’s presence or absence can make or break a team is antithetical to how a team should operate. An organization that lacks depth places immense responsibility on the shoulders of a few. This can be a crucial mistake, as the Indianapolis Colts learned during their 2011-2012 season. When their superstar quarterback, Peyton Manning, sustained a neck injury and missed the entire season, the team suffered. They won only two games that season because they did not have a backup plan in the event of Manning’s absence.
By contrast, when St. Louis Rams quarterback Trent Green was injured in 1999, backup quarterback Kurt Warner took over. This deep bench substitution led to the Rams’ first Super Bowl win and sparked a three-season run that is famously known as the “Greatest Show on Turf.”
Just as a good coach has a plan to replace a starting player, a business leader must have a plan to replace a key employee. This is one of the most helpful and necessary parts of creating depth in a company. Even when it’s not feasible to hire from outside to fill a vacancy, it makes sense to plan for a replacement from within the organization and prepare that person for the new responsibilities.
The unexpected nature of business can make this difficult, however, especially when an organization is battling high turnover—and high turnover seems to be the wave of the future. According to a 2013 study by the Hay Group, organizations across the globe are in a worldwide trend of accelerated turnover. Over the next five years, average employee turnover rates are expected to rise from 20.6 to 23.4 percent, and by 2018, 192 million workers are predicted to walk away from their companies. These rates include high potentials, the employees an organization needs most to develop depth.
Obviously, high turnover works against the development of depth in an organization. But what can be done to buck the trends? One of the first and most important strategies is to be alert to signs of employee dissatisfaction that could lead to turnover. Even better, however, is to encourage retention from the beginning by building in opportunities for team members to grow, learn, and advance within the organization instead of leaving it.
One tactic that served Steve Geuther, former Florida sales director for the AmSan division of Interline Brandswell, was to ask his high potentials to bring their resumes to their annual evaluations. Then he and the employees would have a personal discussion about what they had accomplished over the last year—updating the resumes in the process—and anticipate opportunities that might arise in the coming year. In doing this, Geuther not only showed his team he was invested in them and wanted to see them succeed, but he also created an environment for them to learn, grow, and increase their professional value. The employees left the evaluations desiring to experience growth without leaving the company.
Finally, creating depth is not just a managerial concern but a responsibility all must share. By providing an opportunity for employees to enhance their abilities and move their careers forward, a team’s depth can help foster a culture of greatness.
Excerpt from Chapter 4 of “Great Teams: 16 Things High Performing Organizations Do Differently” by Don Yaeger (Copyright © 2016 Don Yaeger. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson, www.thomasnelson.com).
Don Yaeger is a nine-time New York Times best-selling author, longtime associate editor at Sports Illustrated, and inspirational speaker. His latest book is “Great Teams: 16 Things High Performing Organizations Do Differently” (July 2016; Thomas Nelson).
