Author: Mike Urgo
March Madness is officially here.
Whether that madness is your organization is finally cascading goals for the year, new projects all being approved at the same time, or the upcoming basketball tournament; Q1 of 2025 is coming to a close.
As an avoid sports fan, I am very excited for the basketball side of March Madness and have been thinking all week about what a good topic would be to tie to basketball for this week’s episode.
The answer: Defeating Adversity Through Culture
Adversity is something we all deal with on a day-to-day basis. We deal with it in our personal lives, with our families, in our professional lives, and everywhere in between. One of the most attractive aspects of the NCAA Basketball tournaments are the close games and upsets that happen every year.
We as consumers love an underdog story and a winner who must overcome something. It’s no fun to crown a champion that just blows through everyone. It’s even more impressive when you start to hear the stories of someone overcoming injury or dealing with a loss or trauma.
How does that happen? How are people and teams able to overcome that adversity and achieve success. How is a team down twenty points at half-time able to come back and win? More importantly for this newsletter:
How can we apply a similar mentality to overcome adversity in our professional lives?
Well, if you subscribe to the newsletter, you know I am going to break down the answer for you in four simple steps.
The first was covered in Episode 16: Establishing a Culture. Without an established culture, it is difficult to tackle any adversity, because there is no set expectation for the team. I believe the most successful cultures embrace the idea of failing forward and avoid a culture that fosters an environment of fear. Instituting a set of core values and fostering the team’s culture is the first step in preparing for adversity. It is my belief that teams who successfully handle adversity have been preparing for it from the beginning.
Establishing culture is one piece of being properly prepared for adversity. Make sure you are working with your team(s) to establish contingency plans and methods of communication, should adversity strike. Setting rules around communication is especially important. In sports, when things start to go wrong, the worst communication is loud and negative. As a coach or leader on the team, it’s important to own the narrative. You have to recognize what the team needs.
Do they need to be inspired?
Do they need to be held accountable?
Do they need to be assured?
Do they need guidance?
In business or technology, the same can be said. Whether a bug is found during an implementation, a requirement was missed during discovery and planning, or funding was delayed; it is imperative as leaders to own the narrative with proper preparation and rules of engagement. For example, if a bug is found during development, the last thing that is needed is the executive team finding out from an improper channel. Rather, the team should fully understand the issue, the downstream impacts of the issue, potential solutions of the issue and timing before engaging with stakeholders.
(Note: check out Episode 11 for more on stakeholder management)
The next step is probably the most difficult. It builds directly off establishing a culture and having proactive preparation. Teams must avoid the witch hunt. It seems to be human nature when things don’t go as planned to immediately look for something or someone to blame. It’s impossible to rally a team to overcome adversity if the team is busy trying to place blame. Cultivating a culture and having the right conversations to be prepared for adversity can help. But the key to avoiding the witch hunt sits with leadership.
First, as a leader, you cannot drive conversations that look to place blame. Instead, there should be solution-oriented conversations, and a formal or informal root-cause analysis should be completed after a solution is identified. The purpose of the root cause analysis (ITIL – Problem Management), is not to place blame, but to identify the why and put things in place to avoid similar issues in the future.
The second situation is more difficult, and that is when a higher-level leader is driving a witch hunt conversation. It’s best to acknowledge the emotions driving the conversation and steer the leader(s) towards solutioning. Conversations focused on placing blame will not only delay solutions but will also be incredibly unmotivating to team members.
As a coach, one of the most difficult things to teach athletes is how to handle situations when a teammate makes a mistake. If a player misses an open three-point shot, and hears negative feedback from their team, the odds of them being confident the next time they have an open shot are not high. However, if that same player knows that they have their team’s support whether they make or miss the shot, they are much more likely to be successful and a positive teammate themselves. The same can be said for team members in a professional setting.
Finally, you must rely on the experience from your team members and leaders. Having resources who have been there before and achieved success are priceless resources when dealing with adversity. In my entire collegiate coaching career, I have only lost a couple of games in overtime or shootout. This is partly because I worked hard to establish a culture, and we practiced as a team to prepare for those situations. After the first few wins, we started to have more and more team members who had been there and seen success. This meant that conversations naturally started occurring. Conversations of confidence and determination from leaders on the team who have won already in these situations.
It instilled belief throughout the entire team.
In a professional setting it’s important to lean on and highlight experience within the team. Whether it is a similar situation to what they have seen or mitigating an issue that they previously experienced, don’t discount the experience of your staff. So often I have witnessed team members being silenced because their experience is not perfectly aligned with what is happening. I have also witnessed insecure leaders who think the solution must come from them.
Adversity doesn’t discriminate and it doesn’t typically solve itself based on titles. Adversity is beaten when a group of people work together to accomplish a common goal. In March, in these basketball tournaments, the best games are when two great teams are constantly overcoming adversity throughout the game. Watching the teams working together through missed shots, lead changes, fouls and intense emotions in front of millions of people is so impressive.
So, whether you are a business leader with a transformation initiative on the horizon, a product owner working through an SDLC cycle, or a payroll team working through another payroll week, if you follow these steps, I believe you and your teams can tackle any adversity that comes your way!
Do you need help dealing with adversity? Want to know more about how this type of thinking can have a positive impact on your organization?
Schedule a call to see how I can help you or perhaps you are an organization that is a good fit for my next full-time career move.
https://calendly.com/mjurgo
The ability to take the time to understand your organization, your people, your processes, and translate to technological solutions is what makes Intellectual Nebula so effective!
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