Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
REFLECTION 3 - Life, Liberty, and Layups - Culture Under Pressure
20 Plays5 days ago
HOST: Jess Villegas - ACUITY BUsiness Consulting
Every system has a moment where something gets exposed, not necessarily a failure, but a signal. When this happens it is likely a tension exist between how things are done, and what happens when someone operates outside of that.
In Season 1, I told stories and drew conclusions. In Season 2, I’m slowing that down. These Reflection episodes are about observing the system before interpreting it because what we often call issues with personality or conflict is usually structure and feedback at work.
Today’s story—Life, Liberty, and Layups—is about a pickup basketball game.
But more specifically, it’s about What happens when two different cultures collide…
and one of them doesn’t adapt.
Jess Villegas: jess@acuitybusiness.consulting
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Leaders Commute podcast. I'm Jess Villegas. Every system has a moment where something gets exposed, not necessarily a failure, but a signal. When this happens, it is likely because a tension exists between how things are done and what happens when someone operates outside of that.
00:00:24
Speaker
In season one, I told stories and drew conclusions. In season two, I'm slowing that down. These reflection episodes are about observing the system before interpreting it because what we often call issues with personality or conflict is usually structure and feedback at work.
00:00:41
Speaker
Today's story, Life, Liberty, and Layups, is about a pickup basketball game. But more specifically, it's about what happens when two different cultures collide and one of them doesn't adapt.
00:01:06
Speaker
Early in our childhood, I and my younger brothers Mike and Javier loved to hang out at the local park with our favorite cousins playing games of checkers and caroms, hitting baseballs, and shooting baskets. A high point of the day would be to visit the snack bar with the few dollars we managed to save.
00:01:22
Speaker
On one particular day, we decided to buy some hot dogs with our money. Mike stood in line first, bought us food, and started to walk away. I took a bite of my hot dog as soon as I got it, excited to enjoy one of my all-time favorite foods when my cousin Robert shouted, Jess, it's Friday, you can't eat that.
00:01:40
Speaker
I immediately spit out my food and turned frantically to remind Mike it was Friday, but by this time he was several yards away. Mike, we shouted, don't eat that hot dog. He gave us a puzzled look, so we started chasing after him.
00:01:54
Speaker
Mike was a lot faster than us, so this only encouraged him to run and eat his food faster. By the time we caught up with him, he was already finished. We tried to explain the problem, but he just flashed a big smile and walked away, seeming not to have a care in the world.
00:02:08
Speaker
The rest of the day, Robert and I strategized on how to explain to my mother, his aunt, why I did not take better care of my brother and why I would be responsible if he did not go to heaven.
00:02:20
Speaker
In my last podcast, The Fog of Score, I referred to a key learning ground for how I would think about business and leadership in the future. For almost 15 years, I received my lessons every Saturday on the outdoor, sun-drenched, cement courts of Liberty Park in Cerritos, California.
00:02:37
Speaker
The Liberty Boys were an extraordinarily close cohort of friends, brothers, cousins, sons, and other such relations, united by their intense love of pickup basketball and the anticipation of pizza and Cokes at the local straw hat.
00:02:52
Speaker
That podcast focused how in later years the Liberty Boys experience impacted my thinking as a recreational basketball coach. Today, I'll pivot toward how that same experience has informed my thinking about organizational culture.
00:03:05
Speaker
Our camaraderie was reaffirmed every Saturday morning through a sacred ritual of picking sides, playing ball, and then repeating the process multiple times over two to three hours. It was violated only by a rare instance of Southern California rain or a random super sitting event which resulted in a basketball court land grab by the park and recreation powers that be to sponsor some non-basketball event.
00:03:30
Speaker
One early spring morning, we had to give way to a makeshift but heavily attended craft fair being staged on our courts. Most of the group decided to find something else to fill their suddenly open calendar, but a renegade splinter group of die-hard basketball junkies decided to caravan to find another park in which to play.
00:03:49
Speaker
We eventually found our way to a small park hidden in a residential area. It had only one court, which fortunately appeared to be available. We spilled out of our cars in anticipation of salvaging the day.
00:04:01
Speaker
But as we neared the court, we could see that one half of it was occupied by a couple of guys who were oblivious to our loud arrival on the scene. They continued to shoot baskets mindlessly and casually shoot the breeze without any sense of urgency or any indication they would be moving on anytime soon.
00:04:19
Speaker
Hey guys, Cousin Robert blurted. We've got eight men here, and you've got two. Why don't we combine and run a full court five on five game? After some friendly prodding, they reluctantly agreed to the arrangement.
00:04:33
Speaker
Not wasting any time, we quickly self-organized into two teams of four and, suspecting they would want to play together, chose instead to assign them each to separate teams so that they could guard each other.
00:04:45
Speaker
This would be the first of a number of aggravations that would challenge the idea of a peaceful end to the day. The game began predictably, with all parties working to establish themselves in these unfamiliar circumstances. The buddies, Russ and Eric were their names, attempted to anchor their positions in the system with displays of aggressiveness and physicality and the occasional bellicose outbursts.
00:05:07
Speaker
The Liberty interlopers were mostly respectful in their play and reasonably managing the competitiveness. But Russ and Eric seemed not to appreciate the culture being imposed on this gathering.
00:05:19
Speaker
The din of constant ribbing and trash talking only served to increase their anxiousness. But what seemed most aggravating to them was our unabashed and shameless promotion of each other, regardless of skill or performance. No matter if it was our phenomenal shooter world who made several long-range shots in a row,
00:05:38
Speaker
or Monero traipsing through defenders to put more shots over the backboard than into the basket, or our display of muscle in the form of Bear and Jetty violently clearing out space and ripping down rebounds, or yours truly, missing my standard quota of easy shots and layups.
00:05:55
Speaker
None of it went unacknowledged, none of it disregarded, in terms of either effusive praise or an encouraging word. Russ and Eric were on opposite sides, but their increasing frustration resulted in them becoming more physical with everyone but each other.
00:06:10
Speaker
However, what they could not appreciate was the implicit permission they gave for everyone else to play in the same way, which happened to be the Liberty Boys' style of choice. Inevitably, things reached a boiling point. During one sequence, Eric fouled Robert extremely hard, which he interpreted as another level of permission to reciprocate.
00:06:29
Speaker
And he did. Eric went to the ground, but then snapped up immediately, seeming to brace for some type of action. Robert shot him a wry, no need for that smile and said, brother, there's no problem.
00:06:41
Speaker
I just thought this was the way we were going roll now. Eric relaxed only a bit as he tried to regain some composure. Unfortunately, Russ began to egg him on. Eric, you don't have to take that from him.
00:06:54
Speaker
Go ahead, show him. Eight pairs of eyes were transfixed on Eric, waiting on some fantastic revelation. Show me what, Robert asked. Eric just bit his tongue, but Russ chimed, my boy knows karate.
00:07:07
Speaker
We all stood in stunned silence. Russ continued, and he's a black belt. What, Robert shouted. Russ reiterated, you heard me. I know he's a black belt.
00:07:19
Speaker
That was it. The fuse was lit. Robert snapped back with, let me tell you what I know. And then he began a frenetic roll call, pointing one at a time to an undisciplined line of allies spread haphazardly around the court.
00:07:32
Speaker
Brother, brother, cousin, cousin, cousin, friend, friend. That's what I know. After a relatively short standoff, Russ waved his hands dismissively and said, come on, Eric, these guys are not serious ballplayers.
00:07:47
Speaker
Let's get out of here. To leverage past impactful experiences, I utilize an evolving context methodology. That is, the knowledge, competencies, and skill sets we build at the various junctures of our career can give new context and meaning to those past experiences.
00:08:04
Speaker
Let me explain. Over the 30 years since this incident with Russ and Eric, the retelling of this story has been replete with arrogance and bravado and several different versions of how the threat to the Liberty Boys legacy was vanquished.
00:08:17
Speaker
But I often wondered what, if any, is a legacy and why was it constantly under threat? Robert, though not one to back down easily, understood that his natural leadership instincts required that he first exhibit some type of calm presence and reflection before jumping into an action that might later cause regret.
00:08:35
Speaker
He did this on the court, and I suspect he did it through his years in the corporate world and then in running his own business. I believe what looked to be bravado in a defense of a legacy was really the safeguard of something the destiny assembled over a long number of years, a system expressing itself as a culture worthy of protection.
00:08:55
Speaker
Donella Meadows identifies several characteristics of systems that are operating well. Two of those are self-organization and resilience. Self-organizing systems learn, diversify, complexify, and evolve seemingly under their own energy.
00:09:11
Speaker
Ms. Meadows writes, it is the ability of a single fertilized ovum to generate out of itself the incredible complexity of a mature frog, a chicken, or a person.
00:09:23
Speaker
The roots of the Liberty Boys are subtle, but they can be traced all the way back to my brother's experience with eating hot dogs and violating religious canons. Artesia Park was less than a mile from Liberty Park and close to where my aunt and uncle lived and conducted business.
00:09:38
Speaker
My brothers and I lived in Norwalk, the next city over, making it easy to gather and strengthen our ties. We protected each other in Artesia, we encouraged each other in Norwalk, and we fought for each other at Liberty Park.
00:09:52
Speaker
Over the next 10 years, we continued on to other familial exploits while our cohort unwittingly succeeded in growing a legion of individuals just as passionate about basketball as we were.
00:10:03
Speaker
Gooch again, Smokin' Joe, Bear, and Yeti, by virtue of their sibling relationships to me and Robert, were legacies. Big Rick and PJ came in through the high school connection with Robert.
00:10:15
Speaker
Ruben, the Hatchet Man, and Monero, all fellow St. Paul High School swordsmen, shored up the Catholic school contingent. World, Weaver, and Pilat connected to all of it through their various work relationships.
00:10:29
Speaker
And still others came via friends of friends. But regardless of how or when they arrived, once they came, they wanted to stay. Resilience is fundamentally a measure of a system's ability to survive and persist within a variable environment.
00:10:45
Speaker
Resilient systems are populated with multiple and diverse species working to keep each other in check. They also strengthen the system's ability to expand its utility and redundancy, which in turn drives longevity.
00:10:58
Speaker
The Liberty Boys dynasty operated consistently over approximately 15 years. Yes, there was a cast of core characters continually institutionalizing their traditions and reinforcing the expected behaviors.
00:11:11
Speaker
But there was also turnover. In the early years, you could spot the occasional uncle compensating for age and diminishing skills by picking out the biggest nephews to bully. That honor mostly went to my brothers, Mike and Javier, or Bear and Yeti, as they would come to be known in Liberty parlance.
00:11:29
Speaker
In time, you could welcome curious sons and nephews finally old enough to hold their own and move from young spectators to energetic participants. My own son, Justin, went from playpen to play in by the time he was 14.
00:11:42
Speaker
Once in a while, there was a special guest, an individual who enjoyed some success in college basketball and had some ties to somebody in our group. But the wild cards were in the invited friends, the most variable of our system inputs, who essentially constituted the pipeline to make sure there would always be enough resources to field a full five-on-five game.
00:12:03
Speaker
This is where culture was hardest at work. It tested skills and it tested commitment. But most importantly, It tested character. My friend Ruben recently reminded me of a manifestation of this dynamic.
00:12:17
Speaker
A fast break occurs when the offense is moving quickly up the court to score before the defense can recover. Often, this takes the form of two to three players working to overrun a single individual.
00:12:29
Speaker
In this one instance, the defensive player was seeking to disrupt the momentum by clapping his hands and calling for the ball as if he were part of the offense. This is not technically cheating, but since t-shirts were the ubiquitous uniform of both teams, it seemed unethical to act in this manner.
00:12:45
Speaker
Play stopped, and Ruben chided the individual, we don't do that here. Lex Sisney, author of Organizational Physics, The Science of Growing a Business, identifies four elements of an effective culture.
00:12:58
Speaker
Values, the qualities of expression that the culture considers most important. Rituals, formal and informal procedures and celebrations that the culture adheres to. Stories,
00:13:09
Speaker
the formal and informal lore that describe the culture's values in action, and consequences, which is what happens to members of the culture when they violate the values.
00:13:20
Speaker
Looking back on the experience with Russ and Eric, indelicate as it was, I contend it was the culture that imposed the consequences that pushed them from the system that day, not arrogance or bravado.
00:13:32
Speaker
I believe the most critical characteristic of our group was a bias towards situational awareness. Each of us in the system needed to be objective about who we were on this roller coaster ride. The natural leaders tend to be associated with the most talent, and often that's the case.
00:13:48
Speaker
But the most critical skill is to quickly assess what will neutralize opponents and contrast that with the talents of the rest of the team, the rest of the organization. They don't need to be loud. They need to be dependable, confident, and calm.
00:14:02
Speaker
The executors, those with easily discernible talents that can be most leveraged at the right time, occupy the most productive position on the bell curve, which also gives them the best view of the spectrum of opportunities.
00:14:15
Speaker
The stabilizers must determine quickly what the system needs at any given moment within the constraints of their ability. Their incremental contributions are augmented by what they allow the rest of the team to accomplish.
00:14:27
Speaker
Once we understand where we reside on the ride in the system, it is easier to adopt the mantra of doing what is best for the whole of the system. Dr. George Sheehan was an American physician, a senior athlete, and an author known for his writings about the sport of running.
00:14:43
Speaker
I pulled the following from the oldest and most dilapidated book in my library, Running and Being, the Total Experience. He said, offense you see is play. Defense is work.
00:14:54
Speaker
When I'm on offense, I create my own world. I act out the drama written. I dance the dance and have choreography. Offense is unrehearsed, exuberant, freewheeling.
00:15:06
Speaker
Offense is excitement which provides its own incitement. But defense needs none of this. Defense is dull, boring, and commonplace.
00:15:17
Speaker
It is the plotting attention to duty. It is grit, determination, and perseverance. It requires a simple act of will. There is never a day that you cannot play defense.
00:15:30
Speaker
All you need is a decision to put out 100%. All of my Liberty brothers, some of them sadly now gone, loved offense because that is where the energy lives and the stories reside.
00:15:42
Speaker
It made the pizza and beer taste better, and it created the ties that kept us together. Of course, when it came to offense, some of us had a lot more stories to tell. But not one of them ever shied away from defense, from the work necessary to become a part of one of the most competitive, respectful, and value-driven, compassionate groups of men that we have ever been associated with.
00:16:06
Speaker
We all came from different places and experiences, but in the end, it was never where we came from that was important. It was all of us making 20-footers, dropping dimes, and missing layups, working from our best selves on that day, and then being prepared to do in the next.
00:16:24
Speaker
like to make one last note. Early in the podcast, I talked about chasing my brother and not be able to catch him back when he was eight or nine years old. and Over the years, he put on enough weight and height to where I eventually could catch up to him.
00:16:36
Speaker
And he got big enough to where he could start lovingly be referred to as bear. But he always had a smile on his face. He smiled when he was fast and he smiled when he was slow. I lost him at the end of 2022. And I'm dedicating this podcast to him.
00:17:03
Speaker
It was easy to tell that story as a win. Our group held its ground and the system protected itself. But that's not really what was happening. No one designed that culture. No one sat down and identified the values or wrote the rules.
00:17:16
Speaker
It self-organized and formed over time through shared experiences, good intentions, and repeated interactions. Eventually, it became clear if you wanted to be part of it, you had to adapt to it.
00:17:28
Speaker
Not because anyone said so, but because the system had already decided what worked. That's the nature of most sustainable cultures. They don't start as strategy, they start as behavior.
00:17:40
Speaker
When we understand this, we can then answer the question of whether we are shaping the culture or if we are just reacting to it. The Leaders Can Be podcast was produced by Acuity Business Consulting.
00:17:52
Speaker
Acuity demystifies the challenge of transforming talent and resources into exceptional and sustainable organizational performance by surfacing actionable clarity in the areas of strategic design, financial management, operational excellence, and leadership development.
00:18:08
Speaker
You can catch a new episode every month wherever you enjoy your favorite podcast. Until next time, I am Jess Villegas, and you have been listening to the Leaders Commute podcast.