Success Part 1 - Defining success

I want to mix it up a little today. The idea of success is a big topic, too big for just a ten minute discussion. So, I’m going to try something different, and break this up into a series. Over the next several episodes we’ll be taking a look at the idea of success and what that means in sports. We’ll then get into practicals and some of the different tools I use to help build a culture of success on each of my teams.

I’ll try my best to include links to different examples or any of the studies I mention in the blog or show notes. Many of the things we talk about are interconnected, so it can be hard to discuss one topic without bringing up others. You may hear me refer to things like circles of control or other concepts we haven’t covered yet. Rest assured, these will be the focus of episodes coming up soon. 

One final disclaimer. What you’ll hear in this series is my opinion. It’s not designed to be the answer, or final say on the matter. Rather, it’s an answer. Hopefully it will spark a thought or conversation about something that may help you.

And with that said, let’s get into it and start off by looking at high level sports. This could be Professional, or a National Team, or even at a big US based university. Anywhere that the on-field game and money become much more intertwined than we may like. 

What does success look like at this elite level? 

As fans, I think that many of us would say championships, or maybe winning our division, or making the playoffs. Most folks would say that more wins equals more success. But stepping back, I think it’s much more nuanced, and in fact I don’t think success is limited to any one thing. Sure as fans we want wins, even if it’s just beating our rivals, but what about the club’s owners and management.

The Chicago Cubs are a good example. For those that may not know, Chicago is a large city. So big, that they are one of just a few cities that host two Major League Baseball teams.

After a 108 year drought, you heard that correctly 108 years, the cubs finally win a championship again in 2016, but if we look back over a forty year period from 1975 - 2015 they made the playoffs seven times. That’s two fewer playoff appearances than the Kansas City Royals, one of the smallest market teams in baseball.

The cubs had long  been known as the “Lovable Losers.” It was a running joke that they could turn every seat in the stadium to face away from the field and still sell out every home game just because people loved going to Wrigley Field. 

A mediocre product on the field with few wins, but they were selling out every home game. Revenue was up or steady; the team was a success, at least financially.

For some organizations, like universities, success may equal visibility. The goal is to be part of the bigger conversation. They want to make sure that boosters and alumni are happy and donations keep coming in. Maybe the team only finished one game over .500, but they beat their rivals and had three games on primetime tv. 

Now, this isn’t everyone, some general managers and coaches go the next step and actually vocalize that success for them comes in incremental steps. "Trust the Process” was a familiar saying for the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers. After missing the playoffs or underperforming for a number of years, management came up with a multi-year plan. A step back in the short term would theoretically allow them to become more competitive in the future. Success equaled franchise growth

Sometimes we’re even allowed a peek behind the curtain. Players will move past the typical interview answers, and share their measures for real success. When asked why she requested a trade from the championship winning Las Vegas Aces, Kelsey Plum talked about personal growth. It would have been easy to stay in Las Vegas and continue to win championships, but she needed to see if she could lead a team the way she’d seen others do it. No bad blood, just the need to grow as a person and player.

So how does any of this relate to youth sports. What does success look like in school age kids?

Whether it’s in a school, club, or community environment it is up to us as coaches to think through this idea of success. This is going to be different at every level and for every team. 

I believe that part of our responsibility as coaches is to define what will be a successful season for our team, within the parameters of our larger program philosophy. For example, at a former school, myself and two other coaches (shout out Fi and Mark) oversaw and coached the girls basketball program from U12 to U18. We structured our program with vertical alignment, with the idea that at a specific age or grade level we would like them know these skills.

If we wanted to be a top level program in high school, that meant our kids needed to leave middle school with a solid foundation of basic skills and understanding. This meant forgoing strategies in middle school that might result in immediate wins, but would not be helping kids grow in their skills. Packing kids in to a static ⅔ zone might get you some wins, but it wasn’t going to teach the kids anything about basic defensive skills or knowledge.

By thinking through what we wanted kids to learn, it then helped us think about what success would look like. 

This is the foundation, and sets the direction for how I’ll coach each team. I can’t keep that to myself though. It's incredibly important that I define and share that vision with my players, for a few reasons.

It helps set a clear expectation going forward.

If our success is team based, then your 15 goal game may not be successful if you ignored your teammates and did it all yourself.

External pressures.

Spectators and fans are the least objective and "in the know" folks when it comes to your team. They aren’t at practice and they don’t necessarily see the things or goals your team is working on. How many times have we had a parent help by coaching their kid from the sideline, often to do the exact opposite of what you're trying to teach. Having a clear definition of success can help reduce the conflict from all the external noise kids are exposed to. This also helps combat the narrative from social media and highlight reels. Kids often don’t realize it took 60 minutes of gameplay to compile that 15 second highlight reel.

Defining your measures for success helps establish a culture of growth vs. perfection. 

It also helps prepare kids for life after school. Unfortunately adulting means that many of us have to deal with KPIs, or management and client expectations. Even though wins and losses have become part of our societal vocabulary, there are very few professions that measure anything, let alone success, in such a binary way.

So, like many of the things I do in coaching, I’ve tried to distill down this larger concept into a simple definition of success for my teams. There may always be things added on here and there, but to reduce the chance of cognitive overload, we focus on three goals.

A personal goal. 

A team goal. 

And if we can do those first two then we just might hit our stretch goal of being in a position to win at the end of the game.

Over the next few episodes I’ll be going into more detail for each of these goals. The how’s and why’s for each one.