What makes an organization great at strategy?

Taking lessons from the playbooks used by the best NBA teams to determine how to organizations stay competitive over the long run.

Hello everyone 👋

This week we are diving into the world of basketball to answer a simple question: what makes an organization great at strategy?

I. What basketball can teach us about strategy

There’s a new podcast that I love. It’s called “Mind the Game” with Lebron James and JJ Reddick, two NBA players. JJ is retired but Lebron continues to dominate the game at 39(!) years old. 

The podcast is completely different from the ESPN “take industry,” where commentators speculate on romantic relationships, scandals and whatever rumor might get the biggest traction on TikTok. Mind the Game focuses on the teams, the players and what makes them great.

The first episode aims to answer one question: what makes a great basketball player?

The conversion is filled with specific details but the one that stood out to me was their focus on basketball IQ. 

Basketball IQ is the ability for a player to understand what plays the other team is trying to run, how to defend them and how to find vulnerabilities. It goes beyond the physical (which all NBA players have) into the mental.

It instantly made me think of the role that strategy IQ plays in organizations and I concluded that strategy IQ affects organizations in the short and long term.

II. Basketball isn’t static and neither is the world

The one minute video above shows a basketball play called the Inverted Pick-and-Roll. The basic pick-and-roll is run by a guard who has the ball, a big who sets a screen (prevents other players from reaching the guard) and then moves towards the basket to receive a pass from the guard to score.

The Inverted version has the big with the ball, the guard sets the screen and instead of passing the ball, the big will take it himself to the basket.

Don’t worry about all the details here. This one play shows how dynamic basketball is.

While an offense runs their play, the defensive team is adjusting as they recognize the strategy . The offense then has to adjust and the cycle repeats. All of this continues to occur over the entire game and even an entire season.

This is where we see basketball IQ come in. The NBA has the best 400 players in the world. They all know how to shoot, dribble and pass the ball. Some may be better shooters than others but the gap in physical skill isn’t that wide.

The best players, like Lebron James, have a high IQ that sets them apart. They can adjust on the fly, recover the ball and score. High IQ players keep track of the nine other players, the shot clock and their own movements, while making rapid decisions.

Leaders and organizations have to do the same. Regardless of whatever strategy you choose, you need to adjust to what is going on around you. A competitor may launch a new product, market conditions may change or key people might leave your organization.

High strategy IQ within organizations means being able to recognize these changes and responding to them rapidly. Luckily, organizations have more time than just a few seconds to figure out what is going on but they can’t remain static.

Short term strategy IQ is all about the in-the-moment adjustments but there’s also long term strategy IQ.

III. The bar for great is always being raised

The 2015 - 2016 Golden State Warriors had one of the best regular seasons in NBA history. They won 73 out of their 82 games, capturing the record for most wins in the regular season. The record still stands today and their offensive rating was 114.5, the best among all 30 NBA teams that year.

However, if you were to bring that exact Warriors team into the 2023 - 2024 league, their offensive rating of 114.5 would only be the 23rd best offense. 

The strategy that the 2015 - 2016 Warriors used to win games is no longer valid. Other teams have adopted similar tactics and have learned to defend against them. The bar for what it means to be a great basketball team is always being raised.

This is where long-term IQ comes into play. It’s one thing to recognize the adjustments needed in the moment but it’s another thing to recognize that the entire playing field has changed.

It can be tempting to keep doing the same thing. For example, NBA players who grew up accustomed to using their physical strength to drive the ball into a layup had to learn to shoot threes. Today’s NBA basketball doesn’t favor players who are simply physically strong.

Organizations may have struck gold with a specific strategy but eventually, that strategy will stop working. A new one needs to be formulated just to maintain their position in the market.

A good chunk of my strategy work is helping organizations accept that their past is no longer relevant. They need to dream of a new future and new ways of doing things. Making these changes across an organization can be difficult but it is the only way to stay competitive over the long run.

High strategy IQ is the ability to accept the  ineffectiveness of certain approaches and the openness to try something new.

To riff on Lebron’s and JJ’s episode one question, we can see that a high IQ, over the short and long term, is one of the key attributes of what makes an organization great at strategy.

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That’s all for this week! Keep thinking of your organization’s strategy IQ and how to raise it.

Ruben

P.S. If you’re looking for outside help to increase your organization’s strategy IQ, check out my strategy work. It’s a holistic way to look at all the attributes that make up strategy IQ including your strategic plan, your people, your industry and more. Get in touch today if this sounds like a good fit.