Lessons on team-building from NBA Finals

Sports, I find, offers a treasure trove of lessons that can be applied to daily life, professional situations, and entrepreneurship. Building a championship team in sports is actually identical to developing a winning team in your company.

With the recent conclusion of the 2011-2012 NBA season and the coronation of the LeBron James and the Miami Heat as NBA champions, I thought it’ll be useful to look at how the organization embarked on its journey towards the finish line, and how effective team-building was instrumental in its victory.

1) Recruit stars to join your team. But don’t neglect the supporting cast.

Think Miami Heat, and the Big Three comes to mind: LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh. But as talented as this trifecta is, they wouldn’t have won the championship without a strong supporting cast. Heat President Pat Riley deserves credit for building a winning team on the cheap after splurging on the three stars.

Although the role players under-performed during the regular season, they showed their worth in the playoffs. Mike Miller sealed the deal in Game 5 while Shane Battier was a revelation throughout the Finals series. Mario Chalmers, the much-maligned little cousin of the team, came through as well.

Similarly, in your company, pay attention to every hire, from the intern to the coffee lady to the receptionist. Get people who can add value to your team, rather than drag everybody down. In startups, talent is even more crucial, as an incompetent staff’s misdemeanor has a greater effect on company morale.

Cut away the deadweight. You’re better off without them.

2) Statistics and data are important in evaluating employees, but the intangibles are just as critical.

American sports is obsessed with statistics. Scouts use it to sift out talent. The movie Moneyball demonstrates that numbers can be a gamechanger if applied correctly. This data fetish has even crept up on the corporate world with jargon like ‘big data’ and ‘analytics’ worming its way out of the geeksphere and into everyday business conversations.

(Read about lessons from the movie Moneyball)

As we enter the digital era and data becomes ubiquitous and abundant, even the startup community has been swept up in the revolution. Leading the charge are characters like Steve Blank and Eric Ries and their merry band of Lean Startup brothers.

Yet in scrutinizing tables and charts, we forget that intangibles matter too. And these qualities aren’t as easily teased out using statistics.

Looking at numbers alone, the Oklahoma City Thunder were the favorites to trump the Heat. Sports analysts sang the same tune in predicting the Heat’s doom. Even I thought the Thunder would win on paper (as much as I rooted for the Heat).