Recruiting a Team vs Cultivating a Program
At Ryde, we believe in culture driving effectiveness: in sports, in business, and in community organisations. What follows is our thinking on purpose and team culture in finding and driving success.
A person really doesn’t become whole, until he becomes a part of something that’s bigger than himself.
– Jim Valvano
In determining what style of cultural evolution to drive within your team, organisation or company, high performance sports can provide a worthwhile framework for how to go about implementing such change. One thing to keep in mind when discussing all things “culture” is the difference between recruiting a high performing team and cultivating a sustainable program.
In sports, as in business, there is an available pathway to go and recruit highly skilled professionals that have an existing skill set commensurate with “winning” at the highest level. However, one of the things to be mindful of when recruiting established talent is that along with a preexisting skillset, can also come an established set of values, attitudes and behaviours. In cultivating a program, leaders often form the basis of cultural evolution on a set of values which drive purpose. This allows for coaches and leaders to recruit talent based on their capacity to align with the cultural markers of the organisation and build longer term programs based on sustainable growth.
When you extract examples from the world of sports, college basketball and football in the US are easily examinable as some of the most effective case studies. Basketball, programs such as Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, Gonzaga and Arizona are notable examples of values-driven organisations - often will head coaches who have a considerable tenure in their position - who not only have distinct playing styles, but also in terms of the cultural foundations of the programs (which often go back generations). It is worth noting, that for a number of these traditional “basketball schools”, similar levels of effectiveness are being seen as a result of the generational cultural influence of programs such as basketball on other sports, translating into success on the football field and other arenas. Powerhouse college football in programs such as Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Michigan provide similar such case studies. It would also be easy, probably easier, to list colleges - across multiple sports - who have chosen to recruit individual talent and a “winning capacity” whether it be at high school, junior college, or at other schools through the assistance of the transfer portal, in the hopes of establishing a winning team. The results speak for themselves.
The schools with the most NCAA college basketball championships include:
UCLA — 11
Kentucky — 8
North Carolina — 6
Duke — 5
Indiana — 5
UConn — 5
Kansas — 4
Villanova — 3
All eight on the list are recognised “blue blood” programs, meaning, recognised as powerhouse or elite programs whether contemporary or historically, and all eight are undoubtedly amongst the most culturally iconic programs in the history of college sports. It is also interesting to note the correlation between academic success and athletic success in these types of schools and programs, which often hold their student-athletes to high levels of accountability in regards to academic standards and achievement.
Therefore, the responsibility of the coach or CEO in each case is significant. One is to mould a set of talented performers into a cohesive team which prioritises winning as its purpose, often set as a targeted short term outcome. For the other leader, it is about establishing a platform of purpose, values and targets which will sustain a program over an extended period of time, and allow for growth, effectiveness, with a high premium placed on measured daily failure and learning.
