Shifting Culture
Shifting or building team culture is not a simple, straightforward process. It's not a quick fix either. It takes time, dedication, patience, and an understanding that there are going to be instances where it feels like you're either moving backward, or standing still.
I view building or shifting team culture in the same vein as teaching novice athletes. It's tempting to throw as much as them as possible, teach them some basics and then go straight into pieces. And I've worked with a couple of coaches who do exactly that. Those athletes, and boats went nowhere because their fundamentals were flawed, and they couldn't build upon any foundation as one had never been established.
Culture is the same. When you rush, you forget details or you cut corners, and sooner rather than later, everything is crumbling because the only standard that has been established is to rush and cut corners.
Details matter.
Why spend the time finding stainless steel bolts and nuts when zinc plated bolts and nuts are cheaper and easier to find? When you can't loosen a bolt at a regatta as your launch time ticks down or you snap the head off the bolt in the center pin, you'll know why that extra bit of time mattered.
All seasons begin with a plan, and how those seasons go is influenced by how detailed that plan is. Now, having stressed details, I believe it is possible to become too bogged down in the details, or go too far down the rabbit hole. I don't believe we need to hammer out the minutes of every single practice. Some coaches do, I prefer not to. I find that when you do that, the goal is to hit time marks rather than progress marks. This drill was supposed to take 10' and despite everyone struggling with the general concept, we're moving on because my plan says so.
I believe a good plan has checkpoints, and both long term, and intermediate goals.
Building culture should be the same. What culture are we attempting to establish? That's a vague, general question so let's break it down into three to five, maybe seven components. It can be more, but I believe you can get the general framework down rather quickly. Eliminate the fluff, get to the bones.
Once we know what we want our culture to center around, the pillars, let's start establishing standards. We should also be aware that this is going to be a period of growth, and there will be growing pains. We should also understand that while the pillars may not change, or change a small amount, the standards will most likely shift as we encounter issues that we'd not anticipated. We're not taking away standards, but we may realize that at some point, what sounded good on paper is not good in practice.
A few years ago I decided I wanted to teach novices to row starting with legs first to minimize the overuse and then over reliance of the arm draw. Sounded great on paper. In practice, it was a disaster.
Once we've established the standards, we need to go about introducing them to the team. Now, I should back track a bit here and say that I believe the team should be included in establishing some of the standards, or at least establishing some team rules. They adhere to the culture, but they also help foster it through buy-in with some of their own contributions. Teammates who break the standards are then not just breaking what the coaches have established, but also what their peers have decided is important.
Once the culture is laid down, it's up to the team and coaches to start living up to that standard. I'm of the age now where I have younger coaches asking me for advice. That's both a heady experience, and also a bit bittersweet as I realize I am no longer the next generation of coach. I'm now more mentor than I am learner. I give lots of advice to younger coaches, but one of the key pieces is that if it's going to be important to the team, then it has to be important to the coaches. Establishing or shifting a culture is not something that I believe happens from behind. You need to get out in front of it and show that you're following the standards you've established. At a certain point, you'd like the culture to be embedded enough that the team takes over and you're pushing from behind, but I believe at no point should you ever feel as though you don't need to be involved.
I believe culture fails for several avoidable reasons.
1. Impatience. Either too impatient to allow it to develop - cutting corners, pushing too early - or too impatient to allow the rewards of the culture to come through. I see this more in professional sports where management or coaches bring in a highly talented, highly mercurial athlete whose cons outweigh what they bring.
2. Allowing it to die. You have to understand that culture is not a one and done deal where once it's built, it stays. You have to feed it, and nurture it. It's organic. It grows or it dies.
3. Being too rigid. Even the best culture needs to evolve. The best coaches learn to adapt and evolve. No one believed Coach Saban at Alabama could last as college football moved away from the war in the trenches, grind everyone up, highly defensive, 20-10 scores and into the no huddle, quick strike, up-tempo, 45-32 scores. Even he himself pushed back against this change, but as it became more evident that the shift was going to happen, Alabama adapted, and now they have a prolific offense while still having a top notch defense.
Culture is the same thing. Going back to point 2, culture will need to adapt and change. I see many older coaches failing at their jobs because they haven't shifted their mindsets to work with incoming athletes. The common excuse is that the younger generations are too soft, too distracted. And in some cases that may be true. However, we only need to look at the coaches who coached the older coaches to see that this sort of belief, that the newer generations aren't as "tough" or committed as previous generations, is one that will continue on forever. The older generation did it right, the newer generation doesn't. And so on.
That's a culture shift. That's an adaptation. You may be set in your ways, but using a dial up modem or DSL, is not the same nor as fast as ethernets and high speed internet. Brick cell phones might be hipster, but they're not going to be able to do what the latest phones can do.
Cultures shift. A successful, long term culture will shift as well.
4. And this has more to do with an overall issue. Understand that culture shift or establishing cultures will take time. You're going to take a few lumps and setbacks along the way. It's going to happen. Take the example of a novice athlete fresh onto the docks, and back that out to the 35,000 foot view of your culture. They will excel, they will fall short, but we keep moving it forward. We don't overreact to either good or bad. We don't panic or wring our hands, and we don't skip steps because we've had a great day. We are methodical and we stick to the plan that we established because we know that we've put in the time to plotting out the course. We know that the plan we've established will get us the long term goal, and we've put checks in place to not sacrifice the short term.
Culture, like many things, is not a quick fix. Very few things in life that offer quick fixes that are lasting. Why do you think the South Beach diet gave way to Paleo which is giving way to Keto which is giving way to... Payday loans that give you cash now at 35 percent interest that you'll never be able to pay back. Short cuts, quick fixes do not work.
If you build culture correctly, and nurture it, you can overcome a lot. If you choose to go the short route, you're in for one hell of a ride.
I view building or shifting team culture in the same vein as teaching novice athletes. It's tempting to throw as much as them as possible, teach them some basics and then go straight into pieces. And I've worked with a couple of coaches who do exactly that. Those athletes, and boats went nowhere because their fundamentals were flawed, and they couldn't build upon any foundation as one had never been established.
Culture is the same. When you rush, you forget details or you cut corners, and sooner rather than later, everything is crumbling because the only standard that has been established is to rush and cut corners.
Details matter.
Why spend the time finding stainless steel bolts and nuts when zinc plated bolts and nuts are cheaper and easier to find? When you can't loosen a bolt at a regatta as your launch time ticks down or you snap the head off the bolt in the center pin, you'll know why that extra bit of time mattered.
All seasons begin with a plan, and how those seasons go is influenced by how detailed that plan is. Now, having stressed details, I believe it is possible to become too bogged down in the details, or go too far down the rabbit hole. I don't believe we need to hammer out the minutes of every single practice. Some coaches do, I prefer not to. I find that when you do that, the goal is to hit time marks rather than progress marks. This drill was supposed to take 10' and despite everyone struggling with the general concept, we're moving on because my plan says so.
I believe a good plan has checkpoints, and both long term, and intermediate goals.
Building culture should be the same. What culture are we attempting to establish? That's a vague, general question so let's break it down into three to five, maybe seven components. It can be more, but I believe you can get the general framework down rather quickly. Eliminate the fluff, get to the bones.
Once we know what we want our culture to center around, the pillars, let's start establishing standards. We should also be aware that this is going to be a period of growth, and there will be growing pains. We should also understand that while the pillars may not change, or change a small amount, the standards will most likely shift as we encounter issues that we'd not anticipated. We're not taking away standards, but we may realize that at some point, what sounded good on paper is not good in practice.
A few years ago I decided I wanted to teach novices to row starting with legs first to minimize the overuse and then over reliance of the arm draw. Sounded great on paper. In practice, it was a disaster.
Once we've established the standards, we need to go about introducing them to the team. Now, I should back track a bit here and say that I believe the team should be included in establishing some of the standards, or at least establishing some team rules. They adhere to the culture, but they also help foster it through buy-in with some of their own contributions. Teammates who break the standards are then not just breaking what the coaches have established, but also what their peers have decided is important.
Once the culture is laid down, it's up to the team and coaches to start living up to that standard. I'm of the age now where I have younger coaches asking me for advice. That's both a heady experience, and also a bit bittersweet as I realize I am no longer the next generation of coach. I'm now more mentor than I am learner. I give lots of advice to younger coaches, but one of the key pieces is that if it's going to be important to the team, then it has to be important to the coaches. Establishing or shifting a culture is not something that I believe happens from behind. You need to get out in front of it and show that you're following the standards you've established. At a certain point, you'd like the culture to be embedded enough that the team takes over and you're pushing from behind, but I believe at no point should you ever feel as though you don't need to be involved.
I believe culture fails for several avoidable reasons.
1. Impatience. Either too impatient to allow it to develop - cutting corners, pushing too early - or too impatient to allow the rewards of the culture to come through. I see this more in professional sports where management or coaches bring in a highly talented, highly mercurial athlete whose cons outweigh what they bring.
2. Allowing it to die. You have to understand that culture is not a one and done deal where once it's built, it stays. You have to feed it, and nurture it. It's organic. It grows or it dies.
3. Being too rigid. Even the best culture needs to evolve. The best coaches learn to adapt and evolve. No one believed Coach Saban at Alabama could last as college football moved away from the war in the trenches, grind everyone up, highly defensive, 20-10 scores and into the no huddle, quick strike, up-tempo, 45-32 scores. Even he himself pushed back against this change, but as it became more evident that the shift was going to happen, Alabama adapted, and now they have a prolific offense while still having a top notch defense.
Culture is the same thing. Going back to point 2, culture will need to adapt and change. I see many older coaches failing at their jobs because they haven't shifted their mindsets to work with incoming athletes. The common excuse is that the younger generations are too soft, too distracted. And in some cases that may be true. However, we only need to look at the coaches who coached the older coaches to see that this sort of belief, that the newer generations aren't as "tough" or committed as previous generations, is one that will continue on forever. The older generation did it right, the newer generation doesn't. And so on.
That's a culture shift. That's an adaptation. You may be set in your ways, but using a dial up modem or DSL, is not the same nor as fast as ethernets and high speed internet. Brick cell phones might be hipster, but they're not going to be able to do what the latest phones can do.
Cultures shift. A successful, long term culture will shift as well.
4. And this has more to do with an overall issue. Understand that culture shift or establishing cultures will take time. You're going to take a few lumps and setbacks along the way. It's going to happen. Take the example of a novice athlete fresh onto the docks, and back that out to the 35,000 foot view of your culture. They will excel, they will fall short, but we keep moving it forward. We don't overreact to either good or bad. We don't panic or wring our hands, and we don't skip steps because we've had a great day. We are methodical and we stick to the plan that we established because we know that we've put in the time to plotting out the course. We know that the plan we've established will get us the long term goal, and we've put checks in place to not sacrifice the short term.
Culture, like many things, is not a quick fix. Very few things in life that offer quick fixes that are lasting. Why do you think the South Beach diet gave way to Paleo which is giving way to Keto which is giving way to... Payday loans that give you cash now at 35 percent interest that you'll never be able to pay back. Short cuts, quick fixes do not work.
If you build culture correctly, and nurture it, you can overcome a lot. If you choose to go the short route, you're in for one hell of a ride.
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