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Skills and Talent are not Enough
Engage the Head and the Heart

The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.

—Robert Frost

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

—Woody Allen

In an October 2008 briefing before Congress, a humbled Alan Greenspan, formerly chair of the Federal Reserve Board for almost 19 years, admitted that he had failed to anticipate the ongoing financial collapse, and was in “shocked disbelief” at the way events had unfolded.1 The world is inherently uncertain, and his inability to foresee the future is only one of endless examples; there are many stories of people and organizations derailed by the emergence of the unexpected. Movie-rental industry leader Blockbuster Entertainment, for example, met its demise when it failed to anticipate the impact that the Internet would have on the way people watch movies. Each of us has our own stories of being blindsided and asking, “How did I not see that coming?”

Conventional ways of thinking and planning fall short in the face of uncertainty, making us vulnerable and ill equipped to respond to the unforeseen. To succeed and thrive in a changing environment, we need strategies that make us more resilient against a shifting future.

In this book we take uncertainty to task, showing that you can conquer it and shape the future to create extraordinary outcomes. You will find an innovative approach to thinking and planning, as well as strategies to navigate uncertainty—to eliminate it where possible, to reduce it where you can, and to be ready to embrace it effectively everywhere else.

Our framework has three components: embracing purpose, engaging people, and expanding the range of possibilities. In the chapters ahead, we weave these components into strategies for thinking and principles for action. Using this framework, you will develop the adaptive capacity to lead both yourself and others into the future.

The ideas we share with you are the result of research in multiple fields and our work with numerous organizations. Our examples reflect a wide spectrum of the human experience and illustrate the broad applicability of our approach to individual, team, and enterprise-wide pursuits. The principles can be applied to your personal as well as your professional life. Along the way you will be introduced to cutting-edge research into how the brain can be harnessed to think more effectively, as well as powerful stories that illustrate how others have successfully created ways to think, plan, and shape their futures.

We start with a story.

Stars and Success

In 1989, a rule change by the International Basketball Federation allowed professional basketball players to compete in the Olympic Games. Fans of the sport in the United States were ecstatic; they felt like they had been handed a permanent ticket to the gold medal. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) thought so, too. The formula would be simple—recruit top NBA players, send them to the games, and success would be assured. After all, who could hope to compete against the elite of the sport? Uncertainty about who would bring home the gold was over.

The 1992 Olympics were the first games to feel the effect of the rule change. The team roster included Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and Scottie Pippin, recognizable names even to people who know almost nothing about the sport. Experts dubbed them the “Dream Team,” and many considered this group to be the greatest sports team ever to play together. Although these players had more experience competing against each other than collaborating, the combined force of their talent would make them unbeatable.

The athletes arrived in Barcelona, site of the 1992 games, and after little more than 15 practice sessions together, they won every match. In fact, the games were more like a massacre than a competition. The point spread between the Dream Team and other teams averaged 44 points per game and, for the first time in Olympic history, Team USA did not call for a single time-out. And how did the other teams react? Athletes on the opposing teams were in awe of these guys. In fact, the other players seemed more interested in photo opportunities with Michael Jordan and getting Magic Johnson's autograph than trying to win.

For the USOC, the results validated their definitive formula for success: send in the stars and bring home the gold. And so, four years later, the formula was applied again. NBA players were recruited, and they showed up, won every game, and brought back the gold in 1996. Ditto for 2000. The USA felt invincible.

In 2004, once again NBA players were recruited and sent to the games in Athens, under the assumption that the formula for success was a certainty. To the astonishment of the entire country, Team USA did not win gold. They didn't even win silver. They ended up with the bronze medal…and even this was not assured until the final minutes of the game against Lithuania. The team was in shock, the country was in shock, and the USOC was in shock—what had gone wrong?

Reflection

Lack of talent was clearly not the problem. The NBA players on the 2004 Olympic team in 2004—including LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Lamar Odom, Carmelo Anthony, and Allen Iverson—were athletes at the top of their game and extraordinarily skilled.

Serious soul searching was needed. To help rethink the formula for success, the USOC recruited coach Mike Krzyzewski, the highly successful head of the men's basketball program at Duke University, to help them make sense of the 2004 debacle. Coach K, as he is affectionately known, agreed to analyze the game tapes. Thorough review surfaced amazingly clear signals that had been ignored.

Although the teams from 1992 to 2000 had been undefeated as they played their way to gold, what nobody had paid attention to was that the point spreads were getting smaller. The Dream Team's margins of 44 points per game were closer to 32 points per game in 1996. In 2000 the margins were about 21 points per game, and several of the wins were absolute nail-biters, with Team USA winning some games by only two points. When a match takes place between a strong and a weak contender, the weaker side has much more to learn from the strong team than the other way around. While Team USA basked in the glory of their wins, the teams from competing countries had become relentless in their study and desire to improve.2

After analyzing the tapes, Coach K's assessment of what was missing was provocative in its simplicity and its application, both to basketball and, more widely, to all domains of human affairs. He identified two core troubling issues.

Lack of Purpose

Coach K found the first problem to be a lack of team purpose. He vividly explained the problem by saying that each player was playing for his own personal reputation and the name on the back of his jersey; what they needed to play for was the three letters on the front of the jersey, USA. The players needed an emotional connection to a more meaningful purpose than individual glory.

The first challenge, then, would be to engage their heart.

Lack of System

Coach K found the second problem to be a lack of a system. He saw that the players were great but the system was not. The tapes showed that each player was playing his own game. LeBron James was playing the LeBron James game, Dwyane Wade was playing the Dwyane Wade game, Carmelo Anthony was playing the Carmelo Anthony game, and so on. Each player was an exceptional athlete in his own way, but there were as many different games being played as there were players on the court. There was no coordinated, collaborative effort that could be described as the Team USA game. And it wasn't their fault. There was no system in place.

The second challenge, then, would be to create one mind, a mind of Team USA.

To create a path for future success, Coach K accepted the role of head coach for the 2008 Olympic men's basketball team.

We Begin with the End

The athletes on the 2008 USA men's basketball team won the gold medal. But the defining moment came during the medal ceremony, just after the players were awarded their individual medals. In team Olympic sports, each player gets a medal but the coach does not. An unprecedented scene occurred when all the players spontaneously took the medals off their necks and hung them around Coach K's. He stood there, wearing all the medals, surrounded by his team, a testament that they were truly in it together, a team of one heart and one mind.

Coach K repeated his successful program when he coached the 2012 men's basketball team, and he has agreed to coach the team for the 2016 Olympics.

What did Coach K do to shape the success of Team USA? We are going to hit “pause” on the story for now, but don't worry, we will come back to it. In the chapters to come, we will reveal the strategy Coach K used in the context of principles each of us can apply to create extraordinary outcomes.

What Awaits

We hear of the one-shot wonders that are in the right place at the right time and achieve a remarkable result, or the group that sacrifices everything to meet an audacious goal, only to collapse from exhaustion and burnout in the aftermath. There is no surefire guarantee that Team USA will win the gold medal in all future...