Warning: This post is one giant sports analogy involving my favorite sports team. Proceed with caution.
In 2007, through a combination of having a poor record and some luck, the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers had the number one pick in the draft that year. Now if you aren’t familiar with the draft, it is basically the first step in acquiring the rights of new, young players to play on your team.
The Blazers, with much fanfare, selected Center Greg Oden of THE Ohio State University. He came highly touted as one of the top center prospects of this decade and was a force to be reckoned with due to his size and skill (especially on the defensive end).
And as soon as the fanfare ended, the groans began as he went down with an injury that sidelined him for his first year.
This year, the excitement built up again and after an up and down half season, people are already calling him a bust. The guy is four months into a long NBA career and you’ve already made that determination? He’s a trainee right now!
The HR person inside of me perks up here though. This happens all of the time in corporate America and this is a great example of it reasons why it is such a short coming of the organization, not the employee. Here’s why:
- You need to create the opportunity to succeed – A center doesn’t bring the basketball up the court so he must be passed to by someone in order to score or grab rebounds to score. If nobody passes to him, he rarely gets the opportunity to succeed. If your marketing department doesn’t produce leads for your sales department to sell to, you can’t hammer on the sales department forever.
- You need to allow for failure – A lot of failure, especially if the game is difficult. Oden is going to drop the ball and get called for a lot of stupid fouls. Organizations need to be prepared to lose business (or games) because of training. Better organizations will lose less because others around the trainee can pick up slack and still keep business.
- Practice, get in the game, then practice again – People just assume that you do this training camp and a player is ready to go. Same thing goes for many training programs: they don’t have constant feedback loops. They expect you to take most of the training information and put it to use. There is a reason why Oden is improving every month: as he gets more game time and more practice, he becomes a better player (sometimes by leaps and bounds).
- Build confidence – The worst thing you can do as a trainer is pull a person out of the game at the first sign of trouble, Again, this goes back to allowing for failure. People get stronger through it. So when you have a person struggling on their task, let them try to figure it out before you bail them out. The best thing you can do is demonstrate confidence that the employee will be able to figure it all out.
Most importantly, when you have a high potential employee, you need to give them the room to grow and improve. Someone who has a high work IQ doesn’t need to be told that they screwed up, they need to build skills that can help them overcome screw ups and polish their game.
February 10, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I would also add that management had huge turnover the past few years and now they have a respectable playoff team, instead being called the Jail Blazers for a long time. That’s an achievement by itself.
For a big man (with the exception of Shaq) a big man needs to develop and takes time. Yao, Dwight Howard, even Brad Miller took a few years before being they were all-stars. Portland has a very good team and the fans need to appreciate it…unless they bring up 1984 again.
It goes to all aspects of sports and business. Give the person the room and resources for the person to thrive and understand the team has goals either for the short or long term.
February 10, 2009 at 12:59 pm
As a basketball fan and a graduate of THE Ohio State University, I would argue that the issue is training. In my opinion, Oden should have stayed in school and developed his game. He wasn’t ready for the NBA and is now being touted as a failure.
To succeed in most careers, (basketball is not excluded), you need more than a year of training. That’s where the real invest should be. Ok, LeBron might be the exception…….
February 10, 2009 at 9:18 pm
@Tracy – Great point, something I have to bring up with fans constantly.
@Melanie – I love the college game (Go Wazzu!) but I disagree with the training aspect of it. I believe the professional game can develop players faster since the season is longer, the practices can be longer and the conditioning is better. I think after three years in the league, Oden is going to be outstanding and is going to be much further along than he would have been playing at OSU.
February 11, 2009 at 7:20 am
Right on with allowing for failure. Bob Sutton had a great post on this today. I’ll never forget one of the top executives at my old company. If I screwed up, he didn’t chastise but instead relayed a story from his career past that was equally bad or worse. As a result, I felt encouraged and I wanted to perform better at work.
February 11, 2009 at 9:12 am
Great post, Lance. I think you’re right, and many companies don’t do all or even any of these things, to their own detriment. I have failed and watched others fail at times, and because we’ve learned from our mistakes — and allowed each other to learn from them — our failures have turned into some of our greatest successes.
I also agree that while practice beyond training is important, it’s also important to continue training employees so that they can apply new learnings to their jobs and keep up with emerging trends. To me, “practice” encompasses many things, and applying skills learned in training can get old if new angles aren’t tested. Give employees new ways to stretch their skills by exposing them to real-world experiences that they can apply to their on-the-job skills: art exhibits, book readings, or off-topic lectures, for example.
February 26, 2009 at 9:22 am
Here’s hoping that Greg doesn’t turn into this generation’s Sam Bowie or LaRue Martin.
From a former Blazer season ticket holder.