When NBA superstars Kyrie Irvine, Kevin Durant AND James Harden joined the same team, it didn’t seem fair. Everyone predicted they would easily dominate their competition.
But… they were totally average. They finished 14th out of 30 teams and lost in the first round of the playoffs.
There’s a lesson here -> you can have the most talent, but without leadership, your team will suck.
And here’s how our obsession with talent over leadership plays out in marketing > The best marketer on the team is promoted to team leader. But the skills that make a great marketer are not the same skills that make a marketing leader. This is why there are so many ineffective marketing teams living a chaotic existence.
On the other hand, good marketing leaders get people to stay, to care, to grow and to produce better work. Then the team wins, the team members win, and the cycle continues.
Over time the team becomes more than just the sum of its parts.
Neil Paine is a sports analyst that can prove that statement.
Neil built an algorithm that identifies who should win or lose a pro basketball game based on the skill of the individual players. A “win above expectation” is when a less skilled team beats a more skilled team.
From 1979 – 2018, the vast majority of coaches won roughly the number of games they were expected to, with only one major outlier – Gregg Popovich. Popovich won 117 games over expectation – more than double the next closest coach.
That’s the power of a great coach.
