Basketball and the IEE Business System

Here at Smarter Solutions we talk a great deal about the Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) Business System and how it can benefit any business.  But many people can say the same thing about other business systems, so how can we communicate the benefit of our specific system?  How about a sports analogy?

Smarter Solutions resides in Austin Texas, which has the San Antonio Spurs as our closest NBA team.  Texas does have three great NBA teams, the Dallas Mavericks and the Houston Rockets, but the team in San Antonio is the one I will discuss and compare to the Oklahoma Thunder.

IEE Business System Benefits

The IEE business system has many benefits, but I am going to focus on the documenting and distribution of process knowledge through the use of the Value Chain diagrams.  In the IEE system, a business would diagram its value chain and drill downs to all significant business processes.  Each process would include links to the procedures and metrics that are aligned with each level of drill-down.  You might think this is similar to a Quality Management System (QMS), which it is at one level, but it is not just about quality; it is about the understanding and management of all key work that is performed in the business.

This type of process management, through the Value Chain that we implement within the IEE business system, has many benefits.  I want to focus on just one benefit in this posting: the ability for new employees and managers to step into a task and immediately execute it properly.  When you have your key processes well documented and linked together, any person new to a role can quickly learn the processes and execute them properly.  There is no need to assign an experienced person as guide.  Now let’s compare this to the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Basketball Coaching System

The Spurs coach, Gregg Popovich, manages the team with a system, like the IEE system provided to a business.  If a starter is hurt or not playing well, the coach pulls out an puts in a second-string player.  The result continues to be a good team.  I have seen the Spurs coach get upset because the starters were not playing well and end up benching all of them.  The next five players took the court and began playing as well or better than the starters.  So what did he do? He left them in and sat his high-paid starters for quite a long time.  The spurs play well with nearly every combination of players because they have a system to play basketball that leverages the team process.  They have some of the highest bench scores in the NBA.  Now, are the bench players superstars?  No, they are just good fundamental players that follow the defined system.  Right now only the Spurs and the Atlanta Hawks (with a coach who came from the Spurs) play this type of team system.

If we look at the Oklahoma City Thunder, their coach follows a different philosophy.  The team is built around its superstar players.  The team’s job is to provide situations for the superstars to score.  Durant and Westbrook carry the team.  When one of them is out or hurt, the quality of the team play drops.  This year with the injuries to both of their star players, the Thunder’s record was poor, and it did not make the playoffs.  This is with Westbrook’s having a number of spectacular scoring games, but one player is not enough to beat a good team.  Two great players can beat a good team at times because it is more difficult to closely guard two players at the same time.  Most of the NBA uses this coaching model.

 

Who is recognized by the system?

Most NBA fans would have trouble naming more than one or two players on the Spurs because they play a team game, not a superstar focused game.  These same folks could clearly identify the superstars within the league, but the teams with great teamwork system do not have the same visibility for their players.

Now look at business.  My experience over 40 years of employment is that businesses follow an Oklahoma Thunder type management system.  They recognize heroes with awards, money, and promotions.  Employees and managers that have a great system, which avoids problems, are not recognized or promoted often.  A manager or business that has a management system analogous to the Spurs system is able to be successful when people change-out, or when people are added to the system.  A company that follows a Thunder-like management system will struggle when a particular CEO is gone, as did GE when Jack Welch left or Dell when Michael Dell stepped away.  When a CEO who manages with a Spurs-like system has developed a staff that executes properly no matter who is leading,  a new CEO can step in with no loss of performance.  Can I list a group of CEOs who fit this example? No, not really.  They do not make the news.  They are not having books written about them.  They just do a good job, without being a hero.

A business system or a basketball team should not need heroes!

Now every business finds its sweet spot between defined processes and business heroes that keep things working well.  In the IEE system, we try to provide a set of business system guidelines so that your business behaves more like the Spurs than the Thunder.  Now both models can provide a successful business right now, but the question remains whether the business performance will continue if key people are removed.  If it would change, then you should consider adoption of a business system that would maintain great performance without the key players because it provides robust processes and linked instructions for all levels of process management and governance.

The IEE system is a Spurs-like system.  Traditional management is more of a Thunder-like management. Which of these systems would you like to apply in your business?