The men’s basketball team at Boston College achieved a stunning turnaround in the 2000–2001 season, rebounding from last place in its NCAA Big East Division to first place—with essentially the same starting five players. The team’s transformation may have seemed sudden, but as head coach Al Skinner told HBR’s Roberta Fusaro, the resurgence was partly the result of two principles that can be applied to business teams as well as sports teams. Your team always had talent. What do you think was the source of its problems? When times are bad—and have been bad for several seasons or quarters—it’s easy for people to get defensive about who they are and what they can do. They want to blame other people, other teams, other departments. That’s when leaders need to get team members to drop their guard and respond when they’re told, “We want you to do things a little differently.” It’s tough to do that until you can sweep all the individual agendas off the court, so to speak. In our case, an intense summer trip to Europe isolated the group from families and friends and forced teammates to deal with one another directly and honestly. They had no one to blame—or to lean on—but themselves. They learned to communicate with one another more constructively. That off-site experience also made the guys more aware of the sacrifices necessary to move the team to a new level. They started to focus on using their talents to help the team win, not on their lack of playing time. I guess the same would happen in business: Team members should selflessly match the right skills to the right tasks at the right times. Did you have to make fundamental changes to your program to achieve that transformation in players’ attitudes? Just the opposite, actually. Some failing teams are tempted to throw away the old playbook and start fresh in order to turn things around. But when you’re trying to bounce back from a bad period, I think it’s more important than ever to show consistency. The program—whether that’s a physical-conditioning philosophy or a mission statement—should be something that your team can count on. In our case, the only changes we made from the losing season to the winning one were mental changes; the offensive and defensive strategies were essentially the same, as were the workout routines. The things that upset me or drew praise from me stayed the same from season to season—it wasn’t about the results. You have to focus on the process of turning things around; if you pay too much attention to wins and losses, you’ll always be disappointed.
