The Last Dance – lessons for today?

Anyone who loves basketball should check out the Netflix docuseries ”The Last Dance”. It follows the Chicago Bulls basketball team where superstar Michael Jordan is key in leading the Bulls to successive back to back world championship titles. It's a well put together behind the scenes look at the Bulls with footage showing the historic athletic achievements of these players, interwoven with present day interviews with key figures from that time. They're a little older, a little greyer, but that charisma they exuded on the basketball court still exists. The series also reveals in-house tension between the players, coaching staff and management, which ultimately broke apart a highly successful team.  

In a nutshell, the coach at the time was the legendary Phil Jackson who managed to hold this team, comprising huge egos and talent, together through his ability to understand each player individually, holistically. His ability to do this was due to his own prior success as a player and an understanding of all the stress and pressure that accompanied success. Unfortunately management above Jackson didn’t see eye to eye with him on his unorthodox coaching style. Jerry Krause in particular, who was on the “Board” and athletically challenged, craved credit for being the General Manager of the team and sought accolades for the string of team successes even though his relationship was more operational than hands on with the team members. He had no regard for the time and effort that Coach Jackson took to nurture, understand and mould each player into their pivotal roles within the team. Krause believed the success of the team was largely due to his efforts in ‘buying in’ additional players rather than appreciating the talent he already had.  As described in the series by people that were there “Jerry couldn’t get out of his own way”.

The decay had well and truly set in by the time team members were ridiculing Krause openly for publicly starting a countdown on when Coach Jackson would be replaced, despite back to back team wins. A standoff with players ensued due to their implicit trust in Jackson as a coach. In their view he was reason they were successful as a team. Worse still, when Krause went public with his desire to change what was viewed as a winning formula, his public appearances drew jeers from hometown crowds. Further implosion ensued with the level of distrust between the Board, coach and players growing exponentially, resulting in Jackson leaving the team, followed shortly thereafter by Jordan.

I couldn’t help but think about the business analogies to be drawn from this series. At what point does an organisation stop counting wins and go to market for talent? And if you do, how do you define whether this fresh talent is right for the organisation while ensuring best culture fit? How well do management ‘manage up’ and create a sturdy level of confidence in their team and what they 'bring to the table' for an organisation's success. Should the Board have full access to the business to understand what is happening 'on the shop floor', or should they follow the old adage of 'why fix something that isn’t broken'? More pointedly, is it the Chair's role to manage their Board's behaviour before decisions enforced destroy value and kill team culture, like Krause's did?

History has recorded that Jordan and his team were the most successful team in the history of the NBA during his dynasty, and the series makes for great watching, but let’s not forget that teams win games, not management alone.