Revved for March Madness? Look for These Lessons in Operational Excellence
Editor's Note: Hear more from Eric Lussier at the IndustryWeek Operations Leadership Summit, June 26-28, 2024, where he will co-present "Building a Business Excellence System from the Ground Up - An MEC Case Study."
Throughout my academic and professional career, I’ve often found metaphors and analogies to be useful tools to help clarify thinking and provide deeper insight. As we approach March, many people enjoy the spectacle of the NCAA Division 1 college basketball tournament, lovingly known as “March Madness.”
During this annual tournament, many people enjoy the excitement of filling out their brackets according to how they think the tournament will play out. The excitement and energy turns many eyes onto the sport simply because of the potential for the underdogs—the “Cinderella” teams—to progress and do well. As a single elimination tournament, it drives competition and allows for some great stories to emerge when higher-seeded opponents are upset in a single game.
Thinking through this annual spectacle, what can we learn related to operational excellence, commercial excellence and lean transformation?
1. Both are team sports.
Basketball brings together athletes who have to be able to play both sides of the game – offense and defense with defined roles and different capabilities. Just like with teams that are chartered to work on daily management, process improvement and overall project management, the individual team members contribute their skills to the team to accomplish the tasks at hand.
Having diversity in the teams brings a unique set of skills together aligned to a common purpose and goal. Similarly, some ad hoc team members and fresh players can be brought in to supplement the skillsets needed depending on the situation.
Situational leadership, as developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey, comes into play, tailoring the team needs and membership just as a coach changes players in and out throughout the game. Adapting the team by rotating players in and out throughout the game is a hallmark of basketball to not only provide rest and recuperation for players but also to leverage offensive and defensive strategies.
2. Brackets and charts set the landscape.
The teams involved in March Madness are organized via an overall bracket. This bracket sets the landscape of competitors and typically shows overall win / loss records, with further details about each team available. When working with clients on strategic planning and marketing, we often talk about the competitive landscape and the players involved. From my experience, Marimekko or “mekko” charts provide a great format for illustration, showing the playing field and competition, including market share and overall growth rates. The market share of each competitor can be seen somewhat like the win / loss records of the March Madness teams, as estimates how well the competitor is doing in the markets served.
3. Different roles/ diversity in skillset achieve a common goal.
For the teams competing head-to-head on the court, each player has defined roles and positions to play. What is interesting in basketball is the roles quickly change from offense to defense, with position players needing skills on both aspects of the game. While some players are more heavily weighted with skills for a particular job—like a point guard or shooting guard—all players have diversity in skills that complement each other. The team coalesces and functions as a unit with a common goal of scoring points on offense while also defending against the other team. Diversity is needed and embraced with skills focused on tactics like rebounding, shooting, passing / assists, etc. Each individual contributes their skills to the common goal. This speaks to the same need in continuous improvement teams, where diverse skillsets are united towards a common project or process.
4. Drive toward the basket / attack the target strategies are similar.
In many offenses, the key to success is challenging the defense by attacking the basket. In some cases, this lends itself to an easy score if the basket is undefended. It can also open up the shooters on the outside due to the defense collapsing in to protect the lane / basket.
This approach to offense is similar to competitive strategies looking to attack a market opportunity and open up potential growth. Marketing campaigns launched at the right time and an understanding the competition’s strengths and weaknesses are key to the strategy’s success.
5. Huddles are essential.
One of the classic scenes from basketball is the coach huddled with the team drawing up a quick play using a whiteboard and dry-erase marker. These plays draw from the existing playbook that has been practiced and developed prior to the game and allow for real time feedback and changes.
This team huddle echoes to the daily huddles that are part of lean daily management, as well as the playbooks developed from standard work. These plays have been refined, practiced and documented, allowing the team to execute with precision.
Moreover, the huddle allows the coach to highlight opportunities and relay information to the team quickly. This speaks to the importance for real time course-correction and problem-solving. As John Wooden, the famous coach from UCLA, wisely stated, “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”
While these activities play out quickly on the basketball court, the same activities play out in real time within companies. The same disciplines of having standard work playbooks, coaches and observers of the process, problem-solving and course corrections are just as applicable to basketball games as they are to companies.
6. Free throws bring focus.
One of the most high-pressure situations for players occurs when they are fouled and end up being on the free-throw line. This pressure to perform with the spotlight on them, coupled with the crowd behind the basket attempting to distract, has created a lot of opportunity for sports psychologists to coach and mentor players. Being able to focus on the task at hand and tune out the background noise is essential.
Similarly, business teams need to be able to focus on the task at hand and understand the overall objective. One process tool that can help bring alignment and focus to the overall priority is strategy deployment (or hoshin kanri). This process brings rigor, discipline, alignment and From accountability to the vital few breakthrough priorities that a company will focus on for the year. This methodology requires deciding which processes will be targeted for improvement in a breakthrough manner, while specifically choosing some processes to be only incrementally improved and utilized. The focus and energy created by the strategy deployment process can deliver tremendous results by tuning out some of the background noise and paying specific attention to the goal at hand.
Countdowns keep the pace.
To keep the pace of the game moving, a shot clock is used in college and professional games where the offensive team must attempt a shot at regular intervals. Within lean transformation, this same concept applies when we discuss takt time and cycle time. Specifically, takt time is a theoretical, normalized rate of the demand from customers divided by the available time to produce. This standardized rate is the cornerstone from which standard work and line balancing efforts in lean are based and helps identify the staffing requirements and capacity when compared to the cycle time.
To further the analogy, the countdown of the shot clock in seconds also ties back to the traditional expression of takt time in seconds, which is how I learned it many years ago and continue to teach. The emphasis on the base unit of time as seconds drives the subtle notion of continual improvement and opportunities to further improve down to base units.
Just as in the game of basketball, time is one of the key metrics to manage well, similar to how important reduction in lead time is to delivering products, goods and services to customers. As George Stalk indicated in his book “Competing Against Time,” lead time may be one of the most important differentiators for companies and can serve as a competitive advantage.
While no analogy or metaphor is perfect, it can be informative and helpful to draw parallels to help explain concepts. During the upcoming March Madness season, as brackets are filled out, teams compete on the basketball court and ultimately a final National Champion is crowned, my hope is some of the game dynamics may get you thinking about how basketball can be useful as a metaphor to continually improve your processes and capabilities.
Eric Lussier is a principal at Next Level Partners. He has over 25 years of experience implementing continuous improvement practices in all aspects of operating companies.
