Building a High Performing Organisation

Here are ten quantum leaps (specific ways of acting and behaving) that build high-performing organisations:

Align the Values of Positive Leadership with Business Strategy: Do you communicate clearly and consistently the organisation’s key leadership values (what is essential for its success)? Do you make sure there are measures of success tied to the core values?

Sharpen the Focus: Do you communicate clearly and consistently the vision for the organisation (where it is going)? Does the vision communicate a sharp sense of focus and priorities? Do you make sure there are measures of success tied to the vision?

Lead Through Others: Do you make sure that talented people are recruited, placed in the right roles, and developed? Do you build effective teams? Do you manage effective meetings? Do you delegate effectively? Do you develop “operating principles” for people that enable them to work well together?

Manage Decisions Well: Do you understand the various types of decision processes? Do you communicate the process surrounding a given decision in such a way that everyone is clear on their roles and expectations?

Accelerate the Pace of Change: Do you build processes to share performance information and improve the performance of the organisation? Do you engage people in continuous improvement and learning? Do you manage change effectively?

Stimulate the Creative Flow: Do you create an environment in which innovation flourishes? Do you drive out fear of failure? Do you reward people for creativity and innovation? Do you search out people’s particular strengths? Do you give people opportunities to display their strengths and experience creative flow?

Spread Systems Thinking: Do you encourage people to use a systems approach to solving problems? Are you data-driven in your approach to solving problems? Do you help people overcome the assumption of competence? Do you help people avoid the substitution fallacy?

Communicate in 3-D: Do you communicate well internally, up, down and across the organisation? Do you communicate well with customers, shareholders, regulators, suppliers, and other interest groups? Do you have a message box? Do you mobilise new media as well as old media effectively?

Start With Yourself: Do you set a high standard for personal and professional integrity – and hold other people accountable to a high standard? Specifically, do you display high levels of passion for the organisation, honesty and honour, humour, and humility? Can you communicate effectively, using all each power of communication?

Help People Assume Responsibility: Are you able to alter your own behaviours to achieve higher levels of performance? Are you able to ask powerful questions that enable other people to assume responsibility and perform as effective leaders in the organisation? 

Building a High Performing Organisation

A Model for Inspirational Leadership

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

 

A Model for Inspirational Leadership

Mentors

What is a mentor? What is that mentors do? Can having a mentor help you succeed? 

These days, there are many sophisticated tools available to help those who want to be successful. But one of the most valuable assets anyone can have is also one of the oldest - a mentor - someone who can help you learn the ropes, find your way around obstacles, and chart a course that will get you where you want to go.

Just about every successful person, whether they are in business or one of the professions, sports, the arts, or any other field of endeavour, has had the benefit of at least one mentor. Very often, they've had many more than that.

Mentors are people who have achieved success themselves and want to pass along what they've learned to others. They don't usually tell you what to do - that's not their role - but they do help you weigh your options and think through decisions. 

Who are you mentoring and who is mentoring you? 

Mentors

Adaptive Leadership

Ronald Heifetz is the King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership and founder of the Centre for Public Leadership at Harvard. Recognised for his seminal work on both the practice and teaching of leadership, his research focuses on building the adaptive capacity of societies and organisations. His first book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, has been reprinted and translated many times. In this video, he explains his concept of adaptive leadership:

Adaptive Leadership

Integrity and Character

“By themselves, integrity and character do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.”

Integrity and Character

Decision Making

‘None of us have a real understanding of where we are heading. I don't. I have senses about it. But decisions don't wait, investment decisions or personal decisions and prioritisation don't wait, for that picture to be clarified. You have to make them when you have to make them. So you take your shots and clean up the bad ones later. I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realise that you are wrong, correct course very quickly.’ 

Andy Grove, Senior Advisor to Intel Corporation

Decision Making

7 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From the US Navy Seals

Entrepreneurs can learn a great deal from the Navy Seals. Here are 7 lessons:

1. Take Decisive Action: Build your company so that you can move quickly, regardless of the situation. You won’t have perfect information. You won’t make perfect decisions. But you can’t afford to delay and ponder. Being decisive and nailing the execution will make you effective in the long run.

2. Fear Nothing: Life is full of danger. You can spend your time worrying or you can build a team, plan an attack, and go to battle. Seals volunteer for missions few people would face. But that’s not because they’re reckless. It’s because they train constantly and know their team can handle it. Put together a solid team, a sensible plan, and work hard and you can beat the odds.

3. Seek Excellence, not Fame: How many athletes can you name? How many politicians? How many CEO’s? Probably quite a few. How about Navy Seals? Not so many. They devote everything to mission success, but don’t go looking for headlines. Entrepreneurs should do the same. Build a great product, a great company, and a great culture. Do these things and press will come, but headlines should be a side effect and not the goal.

4. Lock and Load: “Lock and Load” literally means preparing your weapon, but also represents a state of mind. Seals don’t know when they will be called on, but are ready to perform at a moment’s notice. As an entrepreneur, opportunities will come in unexpected situations and you won’t have advance notice. So be prepared to give your elevator pitch or launch an immediate demo. A 30 second chance encounter can change your life, but only if you’re locked and loaded.

5. Leave no Man Behind: Teamwork is everything. But that doesn’t end at holding meetings and dividing tasks. You should be maniacal about defending your team. Cohesive teams are forged over months and years of going to war together. Showing loyalty to your team is one of the most powerful messages in business. Missions can fail. Features can fail. Products can fail. But your loyalty should never fail. Ever.

6. Plan Your Mission, but Prepare to Pivot: Seals plan carefully. They prepare for dozens of scenarios and pay attention to every detail. Yet unknowns will always happen. Their teams are agile, handle surprises, and make adjustments on the fly. Entrepreneurs need to prepare diligently. But it’s the combination of preparation and agility that turns a good team into a great company.

7. Make Peace with Constant Chaos: You don’t know where the land mines are. You don’t know what announcements will be released tomorrow. Your life is full of legal issues, product issues, service issues, sales issues, financing issues, recruiting issues, travel issues, etc. There are always 1,000 things to do and only time for 100. Yet that will never change. So you need to make peace with the idea of being around constant chaos. Break down your mission into components, define them, plan them, execute on them, and train yourself to be calm under fire. The ability to sit amidst chaos yet focus on the task at hand and execute well is the key to running a high-growth venture.

7 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From the US Navy Seals

Opinions

Silicon Valley futurist Paul Saffo has long argued that the best leaders and the best organisations have strong opinions that are weakly held. Strong opinions reflect and instil confidence, and also provide clear guidance about the direction that people should try to go right now. But, since those opinions are weakly held, they don't stand as barriers to change when better information comes along.

Opinions

Leadership is a Transfer of Belief

As a leader you are not just managing people, you are managing their beliefs. 

Beliefs are contagious. 

As a leader if you don’t believe you can build a great team or organisation then your people won’t believe. 

To win in the marketplace you must first believe you can win in the marketplace and this belief must be transferred to the people in your organisation. 

Great coaches inspire their teams to believe they can win. Great sales managers get their sales people to believe in their product or service. Great teachers inspire their students to believe in themselves.

Leadership is a Transfer of Belief

Sustaining Success

Sustaining success is a challenge. Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, fully understands this. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Bolt completed three exhilarating sprint performances, not only winning gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay, but also setting world records in each discipline. His feat solidified his designation as the fastest man on earth. How does Bolt maintain this level of success? What can leaders learn from him?

Sustaining Success

Military Leadership as a Role Model for Business Leadership

Military service—particularly service in the crucible of combat—is exceptionally effective at developing leaders. Why? It's nurture, not nature.

First, in all services, military leadership qualities are formed in a progressive and sequential series of carefully planned training, educational, and experiential events—far more time-consuming and expensive than similar training in industry or government. Secondly, military leaders tend to hold high levels of responsibility and authority at low levels of our organisations. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, military leadership is based on a concept of duty, service, and self-sacrifice; soldiers take an oath to that effect.

Soldiers view their obligations to followers as a moral responsibility, defining leadership as placing follower needs before those of the leader, and this value priority is taught to junior leaders. Military leadership extends to caring for the families of soldiers, sailors and airmen, especially when service members are deployed.

When serving in crisis conditions where leadership influences the physical well being or survival of both the leader and the led—in extremis contexts—transactional sources of motivation (e.g. pay, rewards, or threat of punishment) become insufficient. Why should a person be motivated by rewards when he might not live to enjoy them? Why would a person fear administrative punishment when compliance might lead to injury or death? Soldiers in such circumstances must be led in ways that inspire, rather than require, trust and confidence. When followers have trust and confidence in a charismatic leader, they are transformed into willing, rather than merely compliant, agents. 

In the language of leadership theorists, such influence is termed transformational leadership, and it is the dominant style of military leaders.

Contrast the military leader value set reflecting service to the one that currently exists in some businesses. Are we likely to see business leaders placing the well-being of their shareholders and employees above their own – in compensation discussions for instance? The quantity of compensation awarded to the ceo of Marks and Spencer for instance isn't as relevant as the message to followers that, when times were tough, the leader puts his personal well being ahead of theirs.

Such perceptions of a military leader in combat would render that leader mistrusted and ineffective in the eyes of soldiers forever. Why should business leaders expect anything else on the part of people desperate about the loss of their equity or employment or lifestyles? The current economic environment, partly caused by a crisis of self-service leadership, has created belt-tightening reminiscent of a world war, with budgets slashed, travel funding restricted, training programmes cut, personnel layoffs, and other draconian, cash-saving measures in place. 

CEOs have to start leading like generals—even if that means living a lifestyle in common with their troops. The best leadership—whether in peacetime or war—is borne as a conscientious obligation to serve.

In many business environs it is difficult to inculcate a value set that makes leaders servants to their followers. In contrast, leaders who have operated in the crucibles common to military and other dangerous public service occupations tend to hold such values. Tie selflessness with the adaptive capacity, innovation, and flexibility demanded by dangerous contexts, and one can see the value of military leadership as a model for leaders in the private sector.

In your own development as a leader, have you found value in putting other people first? Did it seem out of place in competitive, results-oriented businesses? Did it powerfully influence people, or did it merely suggest weakness? And have you had role models in business that you see as effective because of their servant leader orientation?

Military Leadership as a Role Model for Business Leadership

Effective Bosses

'One of the defining, and most crucial, features of effective bosses is that they shield their followers -- whether from political manoeuvring or resource grabbing or just the innumerable distractions, indignities, time suckers, lame rules, and local idiots that go with organisational life -- and create the space for them to succeed.'

Robert I. Sutton, management professor at Stanford University

Effective Bosses

Athletes in Business

'It is interesting to me that so few athletes make a successful move into business. There are so many things about being an athlete that should prepare you for this world. Discipline, practice, outworking your opponent ... all of that is just as important to me today as it was in the NBA.'

Magic Johnson

Athletes in Business

The Dutch Soccer Team and Personal Development

Many people are holding back their personal development by ignoring an important step – accepting responsibility for their actions.

A great example of this has been the reaction of the Dutch to their loss in the World Cup final last Sunday. 

As a nation, they have a legacy of playing inspirational, total football. But someone took the decision that this would not work against Spain so they took a different approach. They were brutal, frequently on the wrong side of the line that separates aggressive from illegal. Because the referee stopped them, they have turned on him as the reason for their loss. The Dutch players, management team an press all blame the referee, Howard Webb, for their loss.  Yet an objective analysis showed that far from being at fault, Webb got well over 80% of his decisions right.

The only Dutchman to openly criticise his country’s approach is Johan Cruyff who in fact blamed Webb for being too lenient, pointing out that Holland could, and perhaps should, have been down to nine players by half time. As a side issue, if Webb had done that, people would have criticised him for ruining the final!

Instead of blaming others, the Dutch players and managers should take a long hard look at themselves and accept responsibility for their decision to play as they did, and for the consequences.

It is easy when we are under pressure to perform, to change winning tactics and to blame others if we fail. For the Dutch football team, there is no greater pressure than playing in a World Cup final. They could turn themselves into admirable role models if they were to take a deep breath, admit that they were wrong and accept responsibility for the consequences of losing.

Of course, equally dangerous are those people who accept responsibility for everything, not realising when it’s just not “their stuff”.

If you look at the word “responsibility”, you can break it down into” response” and “ability”: the ability to respond. If something isn’t working, someone involved has to have the ability to respond and to try something else. If instead, you do more of what isn’t working, you get more failure.

Shame nobody from the Dutch side realised that last Sunday!

The Dutch Soccer Team and Personal Development

Winning Under Pressure

Give Hall of Fame golfer Gary Player 15 minutes and he'll try to save the world.

Ask him about his new book Don't Choke: A Champion's Guide to Winning Under Pressure and he'll recruit you into his army of revolutionists trying to change the way we live.

"One of the reasons that I wrote this book is I would like to try to help people," said Player, 74, a nine-time major winner from South Africa. "This is not for golfers only. How about a businessman? How about a mother who has to make a big decision? A granny speaking to her grandchildren."

Here is what he Gary Player has to say about why now is the right time for him to publish this book:

'Maturity. When you write a book like this in your 30s people say "what does he really know about life?" Now "this man has done something, nobody else in the world has done. He must have some common sense and reason for his success and worthwhile to listen to."'

Winning Under Pressure

What Separates Winners

"Mental fitness is much more important to my game. To be at this level, everyone has great physical tools. What separates winners is the mental game." 

Serena Williams

What Separates Winners

Are you Making Mistakes with Top Talent?

With today's difficult job market limiting employees' mobility, executives have a unique opportunity to boost the motivation and productivity of their top talent without spending lots of money. Unfortunately, many companies are missing the mark – especially when it comes to managing their emerging leaders, or "high potentials." 

Here are the five biggest mistakes companies are making with high-potential talent:

1. Ignoring the view from the pipeline.

2. Treating all high potentials the same.

3. Leaving high-potentials on their own.

4. Not using high-potentials to develop others.

5. Being unclear about high-potential status. 

For more, see - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303695604575182172745155334.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

Are you Making Mistakes with Top Talent?

Think Different!

This Apple ad leads with a fundamental leadership premise: Be courageous enough to be yourself. Entertaining, inspiring, and educational, this clip is a must-download on any leader's iPhone. Filled with role models and ideas to emulate, this clip will get you thinking about your leadership style, philosophy and broader goals.

Think Different!

Control Over Your Emotions

When you hit your thumb with a hammer, you know what causes the pain. Do you know what causes the emotion?

All of us have nervous systems that cause us to feel pain. All of us have emotions, too. We feel happy, sad, angry, elated, hopeless, inspired. But where do the emotions come from? What causes them?

When you hit your thumb with a hammer, you feel pain. You may also feel some anger and maybe even some shame. We can safely say that the hammer caused the pain. But we can't say that the hammer caused the anger or the shame. If that were true, then it wouldn't matter who hit them on the thumb, every single one would feel exactly the same emotions.

So how come you get mad when the same situation doesn't bother someone else at all? They laugh it off without a hint of anger. You see, the truth is that you cause you own emotions, and you do it with your thoughts. Many centuries ago, Epictetus said, "We are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by our opinion of the things that happen." However, you don't have to let your inner feelings be dictated by the external environment.

You can, bit by bit, learn to handle any and every situation you want to. You can learn to change your opinion of the things that happen so that you control your emotions, rather than letting them control you. Can you see yourself taking charge like this?

Control Over Your Emotions

The 5 Characteristics of a CHAMP Leader

These five characteristics of a CHAMP are to be applied inside organisations in two ways:

A standard for how organisational leaders must lead;

As a standard against which all potential team members are measured for during the hiring process and are held accountable to after becoming a part of the team.

These are same characteristics expected of all within an organisation although they are applied slightly differently. Here we outline how leaders should apply the five traits.

Commitment

Leaders need to know how to gain commitment to a compelling vision and the strategy to achieve it. This also includes investing the time and energy in creating that compelling vision and strategy and having the courage to ask for help in achieving it. This comes from leaders who know how to communicate in a way that influences their team members in a positive way. It's a way of communicating that shows how each individual team member benefits when the organisation fulfils it vision and strategy, gaining buy-in from all.

Humility

Leaders must lead by example in setting the expectation of constant and never ending improvement, and they show it by being open to feedback from all sources. Being open to feedback means more than just proclaiming there is an "open door" policy. It must be shown by actually taking feedback and true appreciation for that feedback by saying "thank you' without rationalising and justifying the present situation and then communicating back to the individual who offered the feedback with what is being done with it (it doesn't have to be implemented, it just needs to be shown as being truly considered, to have been effective).

Accountability

Leaders must set the tone that there is accountability to responsibilities and roles throughout the organisation. Leaders must set up systems for identifying realistic goals and outcomes with accountability to them (in all sports there is a Scoreboard in the arenas, a Scorecard for everyone involved to track progress in a game and a Final Score in the newspaper for all to see the results the next day).

Motivation

Leaders must be exemplars in showing they are motivated in nuanced ways. It is usually easy for leaders to look motivated by showing up early and staying late and expecting others to do the same. But motivation is more than just "hard work" and "long hours." It means being motivated to take action on difficult decisions and in challenging situations. This means avoiding procrastination at all costs and refusing to tolerate things that do not improve the organisation and support the best efforts of team members.

Leaders must understand human motivation and apply the following assumptions in their approach:

Everyone on the team wants to d a good job.

Actions/decisions are always done with positive intent with the best resources individuals have available to them at the time.

People want to be recognised for their contributions.

People are motivated by intrinsic factors.

Preparation

Leaders must also lead by example and set the tone for their organisation that preparation is vital to an organisation's success. It means that leaders should be certain any meeting they hold are designed in a way in which all those invited to a meeting  clearly communicated. Schedules should be well maintained and projected as far in to the future as possible while offering enough flexibility to allow for reasonable adjustments. The leader should be continually looking for ways to raise the bar on individual and organisational preparation. This includes punctuality, meeting deadlines, returning phone calls, and planning the year, quarter, month, weeks and days to maximise results.

The 5 Characteristics of a CHAMP Leader

Friendships

No friendship is as crucial to your self-esteem as the friendship you maintain with yourself.

There's no doubt about it, friendships are an important part of life. However, all your other friendships combined aren't as important as the one you have with yourself. Every day of your life you send yourself thousands of messages that determine how you elevate your own worth.

The evaluation you make of your worth is what determines your level of self-esteem. Of course, the messages of love and acceptance we get from our family and friends affect our self-esteem, too. But they don't send even a tiny fraction of the number of messages that we send to ourselves. They don't have the opportunity to affect you.

Besides, if you're continually sending yourself negative, devaluing appraisals, you'll drown out the other messages, even if they're as positive as they could possibly be. It's important that you, yourself, become the source of these positive messages. When this happens, the leverage you'll have from your "inside" position will make enormous change possible in an incredibly short period of time.

Unfortunately, most people spend much more time focusing on their faults and mistakes than they do on their strengths and successes. But it's a skill that can be learned and perfected, and you have a lot of options to help you learn this skill. 

Friendships

Mental Toughness

Positive Leadership will be at the US Women's Open golf championship this week. This tournament is a test of many of the values of Positive Leadership - not least, mental toughness. Good luck to all those competing!

Mental Toughness

Playing for the Team

How many leaders understand the importance of communicating with employees about the connection between their work and their company’s mission?

As one of our client’s reminded us recently: "I always think of the old story about a man who was walking along a road and saw two men moving bricks. 'What are you doing?' he asks. One worker says 'I'm moving bricks from this side of the road to the other.' Another says, 'I'm building a cathedral.'"

As a leader, you have to find ways to make sure people in your organisation know exactly how their work connects to the broader mission of the organisation. They need to know: How is this making our organisation better? "

A lot of the time, people are not sure how their work contributes to the larger whole. Leaders can provide the context.

Keep in mind that most people have some desire to make a difference. Here are three concrete ways to make sure your company’s employees understand how their work is making an impact:

Formalise it. Don't just develop performance objectives with a list of tasks and outputs. Incorporate the mission-connection into your employees' performance plans by including a link to the results your company delivers.

Celebrate success. It's easy to become so wrapped up in the day-to-day rush of activities or the next big challenge that we forget to recognise the victories already secured and how they've contributed to the mission. Don't make that mistake. This is about more than the annual employee awards programme and spot awards. It's about personal e-mails or phone calls. It's about making an unscripted appearance at a team meeting to thank everyone for getting closer to the goal. It's about a sincere expression of gratitude.

Make it a habit. 'One and done' will not suffice. As a general rule of thumb, you'll need to communicate your message connecting employees to the mission at least seven times before it begins to stick. 

Playing for the Team

5 Team-Building Lessons from the NBA Playoffs

Experience Matters

Build a Deep Bench

Strive to Reduce Turnover

Compete Hard, and Follow Through

Maturity turns out to be a pretty potent competitive advantage. Just ask Derek Fisher of the Lakers who, even at the age of 35, has been a game-changer during the team’s playoff run. And he’s not alone. The average age of a player on the Celtics is 29 and on the Lakers, the average age is 28. And even the kids are pretty deep on experience. The youngest player on either team is Andrew Bynum; though he is 22, he has spent a full five seasons in the NBA.

In the USA, the National Basketball Association has just completed its season ending play-offs, with the Los Angeles Lakers beating the Boston Celtics in the final game of a 7 game series. 

Here are some team-building lessons from the play-offs:

Experience Matters

Managing Seasoned Teams Takes a Deft Touch

Build a Deep Bench

Strive to Reduce Turnover

Compete Hard, and Follow Through

Maturity turns out to be a pretty potent competitive advantage. Just ask Derek Fisher of the Lakers who, even at the age of 35, was a game-changer during the team’s playoff run. And he’s not alone. The average age of a player on the Celtics is 29 and on the Lakers, the average age is 28. And even the ‘kids’ are pretty deep on experience. The youngest player on either team is Andrew Bynum; though he is 22, he has spent a full five seasons in the NBA.

Managing Seasoned Teams Takes a Deft Touch

Build a Deep Bench

Strive to Reduce Turnover

Compete Hard, and Follow Through

Maturity turns out to be a pretty potent competitive advantage. Just ask Derek Fisher of the Lakers who, even at the age of 35, has been a game-changer during the team’s playoff run. And he’s not alone. The average age of a player on the Celtics is 29 and on the Lakers, the average age is 28. And even the kids are pretty deep on experience. The youngest player on either team is Andrew Bynum; though he is 22, he has spent a full five seasons in the NBA.

Accomplished veterans such as Fisher, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Kobe Bryant require a different kind of coaching. When the Celtics find themselves down in a game, Doc Rivers is often seen in the huddle reminding players to play together; he focuses on the big picture, and trusts the veterans to follow through in their own way. Lesson: You need to pursue a low-key management approach with a veteran team if you expect to succeed.

Build a Deep Bench

Strive to Reduce Turnover

Compete Hard, and Follow Through

Maturity turns out to be a pretty potent competitive advantage. Just ask Derek Fisher of the Lakers who, even at the age of 35, has been a game-changer during the team’s playoff run. And he’s not alone. The average age of a player on the Celtics is 29 and on the Lakers, the average age is 28. And even the kids are pretty deep on experience. The youngest player on either team is Andrew Bynum; though he is 22, he has spent a full five seasons in the NBA.

Accomplished veterans such as Fisher, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Kobe Bryant require a different kind of coaching. When the Celtics find themselves down in a game, Doc Rivers is often seen in the huddle reminding players to play together; he focuses on the big picture, and trusts the veterans to follow through in their own way. Lesson: You need to pursue a low-key management approach with a veteran team if you expect to succeed.

Your stars can only carry you so far, but your bench can sometimes surprise you by taking you farther still, as the Celtics learned in Game 4 against the Lakers. Glen Davis put up 18 points in 22 minutes, showing that even a 'sometimes contributor' can make a big impact at an important moment.

Strive to Reduce Turnover

Compete Hard, and Follow Through

Maturity turns out to be a pretty potent competitive advantage. Just ask Derek Fisher of the Lakers who, even at the age of 35, has been a game-changer during the team’s playoff run. And he’s not alone. The average age of a player on the Celtics is 29 and on the Lakers, the average age is 28. And even the kids are pretty deep on experience. The youngest player on either team is Andrew Bynum; though he is 22, he has spent a full five seasons in the NBA.

Accomplished veterans such as Fisher, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Kobe Bryant require a different kind of coaching. When the Celtics find themselves down in a game, Doc Rivers is often seen in the huddle reminding players to play together; he focuses on the big picture, and trusts the veterans to follow through in their own way. Lesson: You need to pursue a low-key management approach with a veteran team if you expect to succeed.

Your stars can only carry you so far, but your bench can sometimes surprise you by taking you farther still, as the Celtics learned in Game 4 against the Lakers. Glen Davis put up 18 points in 22 minutes, showing that even a sometimes contributor can make a big impact at an important moment.

You may think that mixing things up on the talent front will help you succeed. But in fact, it takes time to get a team to gel. The Lakers and Celtics have enjoyed low turnover both on and off the court, and it shows. Doc Rivers has coached the Celtics for seven seasons while Phil Jackson has been at the helm of the Lakers since 1999 (save for a period in 2004 and 2005). Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher, the Lakers back-court, have played together for eight seasons - and made seven Finals together.

Compete Hard, and Follow Through

Maturity turns out to be a pretty potent competitive advantage. Just ask Derek Fisher of the Lakers who, even at the age of 35, has been a game-changer during the team’s playoff run. And he’s not alone. The average age of a player on the Celtics is 29 and on the Lakers, the average age is 28. And even the kids are pretty deep on experience. The youngest player on either team is Andrew Bynum; though he is 22, he has spent a full five seasons in the NBA.

Accomplished veterans such as Fisher, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Kobe Bryant require a different kind of coaching. When the Celtics find themselves down in a game, Doc Rivers is often seen in the huddle reminding players to play together; he focuses on the big picture, and trusts the veterans to follow through in their own way. Lesson: You need to pursue a low-key management approach with a veteran team if you expect to succeed.

Your stars can only carry you so far, but your bench can sometimes surprise you by taking you farther still, as the Celtics learned in Game 4 against the Lakers. Glen Davis put up 18 points in 22 minutes, showing that even a sometimes contributor can make a big impact at an important moment.

You may think that mixing things up on the talent front will help you succeed. But in fact, it takes time to get a team to gel. The Lakers and Celtics have enjoyed low turnover both on and off the court, and it shows. Doc Rivers has coached the Celtics for seven seasons while Phil Jackson has been at the helm of the Lakers since 1999 (save for a period in 2004 and 2005). Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher, the Lakers back-court, have played together for eight seasons - and made seven Finals together.

It’s sometimes fashionable to say that you should focus on your own business and forget about the competition. But sometimes getting in the competition’s face is both productive and satisfying. Case in point: Through the first six games of the Finals, the team that won the rebounding battle walked away with the victory in each game. Similarly, sales might be more fun than operations, but both are essential to the success of your business. Follow-through counts, and it counts for a lot.

5 Team-Building Lessons from the NBA Playoffs