April Madness

It's April, time for April-May madness . . . er, okay not the same as March Madness, which has become institutionalized with "brackets" and lots of televised games. I quit filling out brackets several years ago and have paid more attention to the pro game.

I do like to follow sports teams and apply it to principles of management. A few years Michael Lewis wrote "Moneyball," a great story about baseball and how small budget teams were able to create successful strategies. In basketball, I follow the Utah Jazz who have their own way of doing things that has proven successful for a small market franchise.

Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN writes today about their system and how management from the players, coaching staff, and general manager are all aligned to that system. It reminds me a bit of the Japanese who started learn production, famously at Toyota, as a way to make cars. They could not afford the high capital of assembly plants used in the U.S., so developed cooperative systems that over a long period of time created efficiencies that could not be matched by U.S. firms. Many have tried to copy the lean systems of Toyota, but often fail because their systems all the way across are not aligned with it.

The Jazz team, as reported by Arnovitz, keep their players longer than most teams because their system demands familiarity and repetition. Ten of the 13 players on their team are second round draft picks or undrafted. They look for players that can play their flex system. They are all in to their flex system -- they run all the time; a system that requires coordination and discipline not always found in the free flowing NBA game. This from Arnovitz is telling "Utah doesn't swap players in and out of their organization very often. The Jazz build around a core group of young players -- often second-round picks and castoffs -- and invest a great deal of training and expertise in those players. It's one thing to run these sets over and over again to achieve full command of the offense, but quite another to do it with the same core of personnel."

They have a plan and follow it and depend on the people (coaches and players) to implement at high level of commitment. By the way, the only thing not really aligned is the Utah Jazz label itself -- Jazz and Utah are exactly a match. The franchise, however, is imported from New Orleans and the owners have decided to keep the existing brand name rather than try to create value in a new one.