by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them,” William Arthur Ward, 1921-94

    Not only must a leadership team put a compelling vision together through insightful decision making, but it must also assemble the right assets and resources to soundly accomplish that vision. A helpful way of clarifying this important truth is by visiting yet another success by the Golden State Warriors NBA basketball team, as it notches up its third championship inside four years: the potential start of a dynasty. That one recent year it didn’t succeed, it was runner-up by a handful of points. It’s worthy therefore to note how it assembled the right assets and minimized it’s limitations to lift that trophy once more. (Note the use of limitations rather than weaknesses: the latter is loaded with negativity.)

Its leadership team, consisting of its top-line ownership led by Joe Lacob and its talented coaching staff led by Steve Kerr, has put together incredible team fire power: including Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. No other team has two star power like Curry and Durant. Golden State was laser like in its decision making to assemble such a duo and also the foursome.

Such fire power brought about one of the highest 3-pointer percentages (51.3%) in a championship series. It outscored the Cavaliers by 60 points over their latest championship tussle. It also completed 69 free throws out of 76 attempted. All of these spectacular results offset its less spectacular rebound ratio. Other team limitations the Warriors’ leadership had to contend with included Steve Kerr’s personal health difficulties, dealing with in-season and post-season injuries – which encompassed Curry’s regular-season-ending ankle injury – as well as minimizing player boredom and complacency. Likewise, commercial companies or public institutions, successful or otherwise, have to deal with the same sort of issues.

Suffice it is to say that competent leadership has to be clear about the difference between its strategic and operational decisions to put it on a path to success. In the case of Golden State, its key strategic decisions included assembling a masterful coaching team – which includes a former Cavaliers coach as deputy to Kerr in case of health set-backs – , putting together superb player defense and offense, and no longer pursuing in-season records which can only likely exhaust team members. It has also done a good job so far of avoiding off-court scandals and bad publicity, which would only be an unwanted distraction for the players. Unfortunately, when you’re in the limelight, journalists are always looking for bad stories to win attention for themselves. The more you succeed, the more they will try to bring you down.

When it comes to operational decisions: these encompass day-to-day team, player and logistical issues. Such decisions are primarily handled by coaching staff and logistical teams within a sound framework of organizational principles and practices – as an alternative to policies and procedures – set out by Warriors’ strategic leadership team. Those principles likely include: making players feel included, running effective and inspiring half-time breaks, and sustaining morale on the court. Practices would include maintaining high 3-point shooting and free-throw levels. They would also include not allowing rebound levels to fall below a certain level, despite the fact that it isn’t a natural team capability.

All of this fell into a deliberate decision pattern by the Golden State leadership into making optimum choices and to maximize input across the board to generate maximum buy-in at all levels. Without that full buy-in, the Warriors operational people, its coaching staff and, most importantly, its team members, could not have proceeded with full confidence and commitment. How much do you fully include all your people in key strategic and operational decisions?

A team has to sense it has all the talent, capable coaching staff, and the right logistical support to mentally free it up for playing to its utmost ability. It has to feel that it’s operating within the right set of principles, values and practices. Feelings like these imbue confidence in its game plan, such that a team senses it can handle the enormous tests of championship play. In the case of commercial companies and related institutions, those principles, values and practices enable them to withstand the threats, tests and gyrations of the marketplace. Without such sensibilities, a team can find itself constantly looking over its shoulder with concern about the next “shoe-to-drop.”

Despite the significant challenges the Warriors experienced during the playoffs, especially against the Houston Rockets, the Warrior leadership and team hung together to sustain itself against its greatest competitive threats. It withstood the constant media drumbeat for a Cinderella ending, by way of LeBron James and his Cavaliers beating them in an unlikely series victory…because that makes a popular news story. Unfortunately for the sports writers, James’s team was outplayed and didn’t have sufficient talent, despite his super-human gifts. With regard to his talent, the one incident that could potentially sully his status, in this writer’s opinion, was where James threw a Warriors’ player to the court floor, who was charged with guarding him extremely closely. It was unwarranted and remarkably James got away with it, despite the affected player’s protestations…so much for unbiased referees and commentators.

As this writer has commented before, barring unforeseen mishaps or tragedies, a game is often won before a team enters the court or field; owing to the quality of decision making and positioning that occurs in advance. Many NBA teams will be scrambling to catch up with and make themselves competitive, through snatching up LeBron James or other gifted players like him. They will do their darndest to emulate many of the effective strategies that are pursued by the Warriors. However, without the shrewd and talented leadership team, at all levels, that Golden State has, they’re unlikely to cut it. It took the Warriors five years plus of competent decision making to get it to where it is today.

When are you going to start with a longer term view? How much time do you devote to the essential ingredients spelled out in this article to give your team more than a fighting chance? How good is your decision clarity?

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