Sustaining Elite Success

What I learned about sustaining elite success when I was the head coach at Rhode Island College, from my book Entitled To Nothing:

As we moved the program forward after 2007 there were some key components that played an important role in sustaining our level of success.

Define Yourself Clearly and Simply

You need a clear vision of who you want to be as an organization. And you have to make this clear and simple for your team.

Our first core value was “compete.” That was how we defined ourselves. Our definition of competing was “your best effort always, without compromise.” Nothing could get in the way of how hard we played. Ever.

The behavior was defined clearly every day. We celebrated competing in practice. The first one to dive on the floor for a loose ball. Sprinting back after a turnover. Keeping an offensive rebound alive. We showed the behaviors on film. There was no doubt about what competing looked like.

Define the core values and standards for your program clearly and in simple terms. Your values are who you are as a team—and you should define them as behaviors. Your standards are the benchmarks of your conduct. They are how you measure and evaluate what you do.

A clear vision of who you are, for everyone in your organization, is essential to sustain elite success.

Alignment

The culture of your organization needs to align with who you are, but also with the beliefs of your institution. If you are the President or CEO and you report to the board, your beliefs need to align with theirs. If you are a head coach, you need alignment with your athletic director and the school President. You also need to fill your team with people who are aligned. This doesn’t mean you can’t have differences of opinion. But your decisions should always be made with the vision and values of your organization in mind.

You have to be true to yourself. You also have to recruit and retain talent for your organization, and their comfort level is important. To do that in an environment where powerful influences are fighting over the direction of the program is very challenging—and I’d say unsustainable.

Live your culture every day. Your team will as well. They should be walking billboards for what you believe in. If you don’t have align‐ ment, and your culture isn’t something worth fighting for to them, it will be difficult to achieve at a high level.

You can have some success with some outliers, but it will be hard to sustain it at an elite level without true alignment. Get everyone on board with your vision and values.

Culture First – Always

Do you remember the story of Benjy Nichols in my first off-season? He didn’t want to run because his teammates had been missing class. He spoke up, and he walked away. He never played for us again.

That day was one of the most important days in establishing our culture. I was scared as it was happening, not knowing if it was going to cause a mutiny. And I hadn’t planned it. But I stood firm on our culture, and what we were really about. We were going to handle ourselves a certain way off the court.

From that point forward, our guys knew that if they tested me (or what we believed in) that I wouldn’t flinch. You have to be willing to sacrifice talent for your culture. In fact, if you don’t at some point lose someone talented who isn’t really bought in to your culture, something is probably wrong. The sacrifice necessary for elite success is not for everyone.

Always put your culture first. That means making some very tough decisions and losing some talent that you feel can help your team. In the short term, it can be very hard. But over the long haul, any cracks in your culture will be devastating and almost impossible to overcome.

Create Ownership

The idea of ownership is all over this book because my teams at Rhode Island College showed me how it translates to sustained, elite success. Ownership is in the fabric of high performing teams. A lack of ownership is one of the most common differences between good teams and elite teams.

Your values, your standards, and your overall culture—they need to be things that are worth fighting for. To be willing to fight for it, it has to be theirs. It can’t just be something they hear from the boss every day. They have to own it.

Creating ownership comes down to how much control you are willing to give up. You are the leader, and you set the tone and guide the process. But let your players own it. Ask a lot of questions and listen as much as you can. Ask them about the core values and how they would define them. When something doesn’t meet your stan‐ dards, don’t declare that what they did isn’t good enough. Ask ques‐ tions: Is that good enough for us? Does that meet our standard? What are we going to do about it?

Don’t just get them to buy into what you believe. Get them to tell you what they believe. Get them to talk and be willing to listen. It’s extremely powerful when you can say to your group, “this is what you told me you wanted,” when something hard is on the horizon. It’s just as powerful when they hold each other accountable to your standards before you do. They will learn to compete for one another, and the strength of that approach will carry your culture.

The Value of Talent

With all the talk of the importance of culture, it’s easy to forget about the talent. Getting buy-in to the difficult stuff you need to do to win big is significantly easier if they are capable of meeting your demands. Talented individuals can do the hard stuff easier, and when they realize they can do it, they’ll buy into it quicker.

It seems obvious that to sustain a high level of success, you need to have talent. But it gets overlooked more than you think. Not every person you hire, or recruit, is going to be a foot soldier for your values or a great culture guy. But they might be able to consistently perform, and that’s also really important.

Look for natural talent. Guys who make difficult tasks look comfort‐ able, and guys who can adjust on the fly with ease. The right fit for your culture can’t be the only measure. Acquire the talent to succeed, and it will help advance your culture more than you think.

If your culture is right and your players take ownership of it, you can absorb some talent that isn’t as naturally bought in to your approach. The strength of your culture and the leadership of your team will give you a feel for who you can take and how they’ll fit. You need talent to sustain success and advance your culture. Don’t take that for granted.

Not Good Enough

The flip side to the talent paradigm is to make sure you have some teammates who “aren’t good enough.” I’ll explain to you what I mean.

At RIC I was blessed with a number of talented players who we didn’t recruit, Cam Stewart, for example, a key member of our Elite Eight run. Some of them showed up unknowingly. We always had a tryout to give kids a chance, and I started to notice a trend. Not only did we usually keep a couple of those guys every year, one or two of them would usually find their way into the lineup. They became key players for us.

Cameron Stewart. Nick Manson. Darius Debnam. Ethan Gaye. Jacob Page. These weren’t just good teammates who competed hard in practice. They started for us in NCAA Tournaments. Manson and

Debnam started on back-to-back Sweet 16 teams, and I didn’t recruit either one of them. Darius actually came to RIC after we told him we didn’t think he was good enough, and we wouldn’t have room for him. He was a two-year captain on Sweet 16 teams. Think about that for a second. Cam Stewart scored almost 1,000 points in his career.

The guys who “weren’t good enough,” so to speak, did so much to drive our culture. They were the glue to it. We had some elite talent and that was a big part of our success. But the program kids, the ones who had to fight and scratch for their place on the team every day – they were the ones most responsible for our approach. And it was the approach that made our success sustainable. Their hunger, commitment and toughness drove our organization.

John Beilein always said, “Never underestimate the value of a low- maintenance player.” We made it a point to find room for kids who were dying to be a part of it. It mattered to us a lot, and it should matter to you. Find a place within your organization for people with something to prove and reward their contributions. They will become the heartbeat of your team.

Be Flexible

Our championship culture was always fluid. It was constantly evolv‐ ing, as was my approach. We had our basic core values, but that didn’t mean we were averse to trying something new. If you aren’t adapting, you aren’t getting better. You are likely getting worse.

In my seventh year at RIC, the dynamics of our roster had changed. We lost the best point guard in the league, Antone Gray, who was also the best leader I had ever coached. He led us to back-to-back Sweet Sixteens and four straight NCAA Tournaments. While we still had talent, our two best players that next year were forwards, and my new point guard was more of a tough, physical player than a jet.

We were a fast team that liked to play in transition and go off the dribble, but our personnel didn’t fit that style anymore. Our three best players all were physical and got their work done inside. So instead of our wide open, dribble-drive attack, we went to a flex offense—a structured approach that relied on simple screens and pattern passing. I was never a big fan of the flex because I didn’t like the spacing, and I wanted our guards to have room to create. But it fit our personnel better that year, so in year seven, as a head coach, we made a major change. We went on to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, running an offense I really didn’t like. But I was flexible enough to make a major change to fit our personnel.

The most dangerous phrase for organizational success is “because that’s how we’ve always done it.” If you aren’t adapting, you are getting worse. You can stick to your core values and still be flexible. It’s one of the toughest challenges you’ll face, but it’s essential to sustain success.

Be Consistent

Be flexible and consistent? Sounds like a contradiction, but it isn’t.

The reason why your culture has to be clearly defined and explained, and aligned with everything you believe in, is because your players need to see you living it. They have to see it in your behavior. When they see that, they’ll know how much it really means to you, and it will mean more to them.

You must be consistent. Your team is smart, and you aren’t going to fool them. They don’t have to hear it to know it. Your culture has to be who you are, and you have to live it on and off the court, in season and out. You can do it and still make the necessary changes to be successful.

A consistent approach with a flexible mindset can certainly work. Inconsistency in your approach will create cracks in your culture that you’ll never be able to repair. Be consistent in how you live your culture every day.

Fight Entitlement Aggressively

After our Elite Eight run in 2007, I wanted our players to own our success. High expectations were part of the deal and we needed to handle the pressure of being the best. Our warmup shirts had “The Champ Is Here” on the back of them, and we took the floor at the Murray Center to the Jadakiss song of the same name. We talked about being the best team in the league. We prepared that way and carried ourselves that way—with confidence and class. We were picked to finish first in our league in eight of our nine years, and we embraced it every year.

Along with that confidence and the success came a sense of entitle‐ ment. We expected success to happen to us, and we lost some aware‐ ness of the approach necessary to achieve it.

Entitlement is poison for elite cultures. It can get into your system without much notice and it gradually erodes the foundation of your success. As a leader, you must have your radar up and expect it. The confidence that comes with achievement naturally evolves into an expectation of success, and the process can easily suffer. Adapting and staying ahead of the curve is critical.

We started to take for granted what we had built, and I had to fight the entitled mentality aggressively. We no longer appreciated what we had done, or what it would take to maintain it. We talked about what was important to us. Were we happy with one championship or did we want to sustain an elite level of success? Did we want to do it again?

I reminded our guys every day how lucky we were to be a part of something special. We had long conversations about it. We cele‐ brated our competitive excellence and recognized our commitment to one another. We appreciated the people around us who helped us achieve our goals. Winning a championship wasn’t a defining moment for us. The preparation would define us. Not just as a team, but for the rest of our lives.

When I asked my team how they felt about our program, the one word that kept coming up was “grateful.” Grateful to be a part of it. Grateful to have my teammates. Grateful for the opportunity.

Being grateful was a perfect way to combat entitlement creeping into our program. As we moved forward, we decided we would be “Grateful for everything, entitled to nothing.” It became the core of our program.

Recognizing and aggressively combating the entitlement that came along with our success allowed us to sustain it for nine years.