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It was somewhere between night and morning; a false dawn. Different time zones bring about different rhythms. Wide awake, I turned on the hotel TV and channel surfed for 30 seconds until I saw NBA coaching icon Pat Riley being interviewed. I'm a fan of Riley since one could argue he was the first NBA coach to be a "Basketball CEO." He transferred business principles to professional sports and was richly rewarded for his success.
But in this portion of the interview he wasn't talking about success or basketball but instead, what happens when organizations come apart. He refers to this process as "core cracking" or the deconstructing of a close knit team where personal agenda overruns the mission of the whole. With the time-profit continuum becoming less forgiving core cracking happens all around us: once a dynasty in its own right whether a morning show, a station or a cluster, the subtle metamorphosis from we-to-me starts a down spiral than eventually becomes non-survivable.
"Teams break," says Dr. Lew Richfield, sports psychologist and team-mender. Cores crumble for various reasons. Drives and motivations shift direction or intensity. Alliances change from productive to self-interest often causing anti-team behavior to take a different direction so the team no longer exists for each other. What had been camaraderie becomes as Riley puts it, "The disease of me." At the same time at the top, a deadened corporate culture gives itself away by cranking out memos and constricting budgets while middle management (really in the middle) are torn between getting out or undercutting teammates. At this point there are only two options: up or out.
In Riley's 90's book on the anatomy of team success and failure, he isolates sure signs of a formerly great organization on the brink of a cracking core.
- Does the strategic plan seem like a cage? If we can't compete on price or innovation, what can we compete on?
- Do our opponents seem out of focus-larger than life with seemingly endless momentum?
- Is there a fall-off in our staff's effort? A winning business can often survive for a long time talent-rich, even though it has lost the hunger to compete.
- Do team members disagree on who the competition really is and how to parry them?
- Are leaders spending more time settling petty disputes than designing strategy and tactics?
You see this all the time in sports and businesses including radio. The very best company leaders get a sense for a deteriorating core, just as great coaches do; before the bill comes due.
Form changes, spirit lasts.
When the glory days begin to winnow down, a true leader makes the right adjustments; adding a person here, saying goodbye to another there, before core cracking reaches a toxic and terminal phase. And sometimes, it happens regardless. In Coach Riley's words at the sunset of his Lakers' dynasty, "It was okay. It was painful, but it was a time for moving on." That choice is up to you.
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