Last week Sports Illustrated named New York Yankee captain Derek Jeter as its 'Sportsman of the Year', an annual designation given to the person or team that best exemplifies success, integrity, and class.
For those not familiar with Jeter, he has been the Yankee shortstop for 14 seasons, and has helped the team win 5 World Series championships during that time, including the 2009 season that was recently concluded.
Jeter, while individually an outstanding player, is more revered for his reputation as a 'winning' player, one whose contributions to team success are actually greater than what can be found be simply reviewing his statistical performance. In the Sports Illustrated piece, Jeter shared what be felt were the five barriers to team success, and while they were described in a sports context, I think there are many lessons for business and personal success that can be drawn.
1. Individuals who don't care about winning
In sports, there is success, and there is winning championships. Some players (and teams) are satisifed with having 'good' years. Decent results, perhaps winning a few more games that they lose, but not really competing seriously for championships.
2. Self-promoters
Players that care more about themselves than the team, and make it a point to constantly draw attention to themselves can be a detriment to team success. Can we say 'personal branding' anyone? I am starting to think the incredible increase in focus on employee's personal brands could start to inhibit team performance and success. If your team of five folks has four that are obsessing over their personal brands, I think you are going to have a hard time winning.
3. Looking only at statistics
Baseball is a complex game, and while seemingly every activity is recorded, tracked, and analyzed statistically, there are still many nuances of the game, critical to winning, that are not measured quantitatively. In organizations the primary measurement of employees is an annual performance review score. But in many organizations these reviews are done poorly, don't necessarily reflect all the contributions people make to team success, and can actually be biased and misleading. Perhaps more effort should be exerted in companies to uncover these 'hidden' contributions, one way is by using Social Network Analysis.
4. Injury talk
To Jeter, no one cares if you are injured. "You either play, or you don't play. No one wants to know what's bothering you. Sometimes it's a built-in excuse for failure." In the organization there are always going to be constraints and limitations. Competitors will have bigger budgets, regulators will impose ridiculous rules, your technology will be inferior, or people will get sick or go on vacation at the worst possible time. You know what? No one cares. Either you can get the job done, or you can't.
5. Negativity
When Jeter had gone though an 32 at bats (about 8 games) without a hit early in his career, he refused to admit that he was in a batting slump. Focusing on the negative in situations becomes a habit, and it gets too easy to constantly approach situations with why you can't do something instead of how you will get it done. I was on a major system implementation once, on a team of about 30 people that was beset with this kind of negativity. Finally we declared a new policy, no more 'problems' could be logged on the official 'issues list' without first solving one of the open issues. We started to focus more on solving problems in a positive manner instead of just battling each other to uncover more problems, and perpetuate the negativity.
I am a New York Mets fan, so it is not easy to write a post about a Yankeee, but Jeter has been such a winner that it is impossible not to respect what he has accomplished.
I'll close with an example of a 'winning play' that would never appear in the box score from the 2001 playoffs.