In going through some old files this morning, I came across this writ of three years ago that I wrote to focus my Integrated Business Policy / Strategy students the vital nature of strategic thinking. I had completely forgotten I wrote it frankly. After reading it I thought it worthy of my blog audience in light of the massive array of strategic issues our nation is facing. I hope you agree with why I chose to post this this morning!
“Go Long …!”
January 31, 2009
Jim Williams
If you have ever played football as a child, you know the meaning of “Go Long …!” The tallest kid in the neighborhood would usually lust for the position of quarterback. He would drop back shouting to the short, fat kid to “go long ..” and if the fat kid dropped the pass, well, you know the rest of the story. If he caught it and scored, the quarterback was elevated to hero on Hill Avenue for yet another day. With this little story in mind as we begin the journey of grasping the importance of management at a Strategic perspective, it is vital that the practitioner / student break all the chains of the short term, tactical, dimension of management. Both are integral to success or failure for you can have tactical success without strategy but you will never have strategic success without integrated tactical victories as the tent poles of our tent. So you must have both tactical and strategic ingredients but our focus will now focus on the long view, the horizon, the galaxy, the place we know instinctively and intuitively as where we want to go but are not sure the pathway to get there.
There are so many metaphors that one can become dissolved in the rhetoric and lose sight of the imperative. Strategic Management is management toward the long view which sounds so simple and almost an academic or like a consultant’s exercise with a group of leaders. However, from my own personal and professional experience, the depth of the success or failure of a strategy rests in clearly establishing, communicating, committing and investing in the gateways of that strategy. The horizon of strategic in the long view is murky, seemingly immeasurable, and fraught with apathy or worse, misguided enthusiasm for political posturing rather than focused energy forward for success.
With the world focused on the NBA Finals with Orlando and Los Angeles, perhaps focusing our example / metaphor on that experience is a great insight binocular for us so let’s exploit that channel. As a former collegiate basketball player, the different dimensions of this metaphor is perhaps more real to me than for some of you. We hear about King James, Superman, KoBe, Shaq, Magic; ringing any bells? We gasp when we hear three digit million dollar salaries for athletes that did not finish high school and are torn between how wrong that is and the joy of seeing such athleticism that surely deserves such financial rewarding; a dichotomy no doubt.
On all the sports on the world scene, there is none that better represents and is itself a microcosm of our very world in the new century than basketball at the NBA level. There are more and more great athletes we have to nickname for we cannot begin to pronounce their real name. We call the Z or Pav or Hedo. There are many countries now playing in the NBA that most Americans cannot locate on a map such as Lithuania, Turkey, Poland, etc. So at a macroeconomic dimension, the NBA is our new century with a game, an American game, now more and more represented through the skills of disbelief at times by men and women that seem to have arrived on a spaceship rather than on a basketball court.
I believe the pivotal source of energy for the globalization of this American sport is clearly David Stern, the Commissioner of the NBA. Let me insert Mr. Stern’s position description:
“David Stern leads a league that is a model for professional sports in league operations, public service, global marketing and digital technology.”
So, he manages the entire league operations, assesses fines and penalties, is the public face of the NBA, is the master marketing of a game that is purely ENTERTAINMENT and has been the energy cell behind many innovative pathways with digital technology. He is tough. He is fair. He is personable. He is a connoisseur of the game. He is the consummate STRATEGIC leader in world of oversized men and women physically and in egoism. He is The Man in a sport of entertainment that maintains strict tactical guidelines and rules yet with expanding policies to grow the game throughout the earth with a standard set of expectations and deliverables.
Then there is, say, Phil Jackson, a consummate coach that was a former marginal NBA player that has coached some of the great players of the past and currently such as Michael Jordan and now Kobe Bryant. Massive egos! He worked the problem for he built a philosophical process and went about “cat herding” the array of egos into the arena of success.
Then there is, say, LeBron James, the most celebrated, revered player of any sport on earth today arguably. Still a very young, still somewhat immature, gifted athlete that has become great, famous and rich is ways mortal man dreams about yet still creates this quiet sense of, “it just ain’t right nor fair” in the minds of so many struggling with unemployment, student loan debt, debilitating sicknesses, etc, etc.
Then there is, say, Big Bird, a faceless, passionate ticket purchasing man that is perhaps giving up something for his family just to get into a game to watch the King do his thing with mighty slams, sweet swishes or star struck passes nobody else on earth could have seen. But, Mr. Big Bird was there!
So exists our cast of characters as a microcosm of a transitioning global economy; the have’s, the have not’s, the want to be’s and those that have it all! So what does all this have to do with the Go Long … perspective? Simply, it is about well placed, well directed, well articulated, well communicated, well enforced STRATEGY.
The NBA as our example is our example for it represents as clearly as any example of an institution redefining itself from an athletic sport to a global entertainment industry. Think about that! Total redefinition, refocus, re-alignment, re-everything! That is what strategic management, to be effective must encompass, which is complete clarity of the new horizon and then create integrating systems and processes the becomes the gravitational pull toward the new horizon.
Mr. Stern, no doubt, spends most of his mental time and energies on expansion of markets, new marketing approaches while ensure the tactical elements of the game are maintained. The management of the game’s officials while ensuring the game rules are enforced strongly are vital elements of growing the sport through integrity. Fining King James $25,000 for skipping a post game news conference was not to punish Mr. James but to send a clear signal to the global world of basketball under the crown of King David Stern that that behavior will not be tolerated. A reinforcement of a boundary htat strengthens the tent poles of our tent.
Strategic management is a capstone to the pyramid of success. The NBA is a wonderful but only one example of seeing how strategy and tactics meld into the pot of success. The long view is not without failure; look at the Ford Edsel debacle! To use a military example, presidents look at continents, generals look at countries, colonels look at mountains, lieutenants look at trails up the mountains, sergeants view the trees and the soldier cleans his weapon. Going Long! is vital so our challenge is to Think Long via expanding the footprint of your perspective.
If this is done correctly, the tall kid that threw the pass shouting “go long” is still the hero but also is the fat kid for having gotten to a position to capture the stardom of success. Ah yes, the long view!
