In the past few weeks, we’ve focused on some aspects of organizational thinking derived from one of the most successful sports organizations in the world – the New Zealand All Blacks. We’ve discussed the All Blacks as an excellent illustration of how successful organizations think about themselves and their efforts.
Recently, a regional comp popped into mind from an X post – the Louisville Cardinals thanking the Clemson Tigers for cleaning the visitor’s locker room at Cardinal Stadium. First, for all of you Gamecock and Bulldog fans out there, don’t be triggered by the mention of Clemson. You may hate Coach Dabo, but we are just focused on the “culture” aspect of his program, which he would claim is a major factor in their success on the field in the past decade. Now, if you recall, one of the All Black tenets is “Sweep the sheds” (“sheds” being the equivalent of our locker room). This means that each player is responsible for even small tasks that contribute to the health of the whole organization.
In the example of Clemson doing this precise task at Louisville, it got us thinking about making decisions in light of your organizational values. Clemson isn’t the first or only team to clean their locker rooms before they leave a visiting stadium. But it is clearly a small decision that is made in the context of their bigger picture culture. Cleaning the locker rooms doesn’t contribute one bit to any actual on-field play. But it displays a mindset of unity, order, and attention to detail that Coach Swinney, I’m sure, wants to be seen everywhere across his program.
Okay, so clean locker rooms. Who cares? But here’s the thing: truly following this kind of decision-making can be hard, risky, and even counter-intuitive if you are measuring your success by financial bottom lines. If you follow college football, you’ll know that the “transfer portal” is an absolute game-changing novelty right now, and no coach in the country has a more “counter-cultural” take on the portal than does Coach Swinney. He famously (or infamously) takes very few transfers and consistently touts the players on his roster. Phrases like “we like our own guys” and a re-focus on what he calls a family culture come out of his mouth constantly. This season, he’s taken a lot of heat for this decision. It has looked like maybe he could have used another transfer player or two (or, if you are a Clemson fan, five or six).
But this “family culture” and focus on being a development program are big-picture culture items for Coach Swinney, and this transfer portal stance was taken in light of these – he wanted to preserve those two cultural values at all costs. Fans can speculate that maybe it’s possible the stance has cost him a win or two. But Dabo clearly believes the long-term health of his program is harmed by the short-term fix of the transfer portal. He’s also clearly betting that this tactic heavily used by other programs will end up biting them in the behind in the end (here’s looking at you, Florida State).
Maybe some of these decisions will come back to haunt Coach Swinney. Or maybe they won’t. But the point in all this is that healthy organizations make both small and large, easy and difficult decisions within their values framework. To emphasize, many organizations (particularly non-profit organizations) can get lost in the weeds in mission and values considerations. But just as many don’t consider their values at all in their decision-making. The results of this can be harmful to you and your employees.
For example, consider that difficult customer or that difficult employee. You spend tons of time, effort, and resources with this person / group. Your stress level is higher when dealing with them. But you don’t want to lose the account (or have to go through the firing / hiring process). But in the end, is it really worth it? We discussed the All Blacks “No Jerks” policy, which means that no matter how good you are on the field, if you can’t get along as a teammate, you aren’t going to be on the squad. No exceptions. And the All Blacks win. They win a lot. If you had a similar policy for your business, you might lose the account or the employee. Things might be hard for a while. But you might gain some things, in the end: time, peace of mind, and refocused energy to build up other clients and employees.
Sometimes, we need to step back and think seriously about what we want out of our business – what is important to us, what our goals are, and how we want the business to run. If you are “going along just to get along,” it might help to revisit your mission and goals. If you feel like you have well-thought-out values and yet feel like you are still running along on autopilot, you might consider if you are truly making decisions inside those values you say you hold.