The coach draws up the game plan, but the players decide the outcome – what can sport, and basketball in particular, teach us about strategic leadership?

In basketball, a coach can draw an attacking play on the board with millimetre precision. He can explain where a player starts from, which direction he moves in, and who the ball should ultimately end up with.

Then the game begins. The opposition changes their defence. One player makes an unexpected move. The planned passing lane is blocked. And suddenly, nobody is looking at the scoreboard any more. It’s time to play.

In strategic management There are a lot of similarities. Management Team You can draw up a great strategy, set targets and define actions. But ultimately, results are achieved where people make decisions, interact with customers, lead teams and solve day-to-day problems.

Consistent success doesn’t come from following a playbook to the letter. It comes from a team that knows how to play together even when things don’t go to plan.

A good playbook starts with knowing your team

A basketball coach doesn’t start a match from scratch. Before the match, a scouting report is drawn up on the opposition: what sort of team they are, where their strengths lie, where they face challenges, and how the coach’s own team is likely to respond to the situation.

The same principle applies to strategic management. It is not a good idea to develop a strategy solely within the boardroom. First, one should understand the people affected by the implementation of the strategy.

• What actually goes on there in everyday life?
• Where does friction occur?
• What do customers need?
• What skills do the staff already have?
• Where will the change run into a problem?

If a change is planned without involving the people who will have to live with it, the strategy may look excellent on paper but could fall flat in practice as early as the first week.

This is one strategic work one of the most underrated stages. Before we ask ”what should we do?”, it’s sometimes worth asking ”what’s actually going on here?”.

A coach cannot take every decision upon themselves

Let’s imagine a scenario in a basketball match.

The coach stands at the side of the pitch and can see the whole picture. He can give instructions, make substitutions and call a time-out. But he cannot run onto the pitch to make decisions on behalf of every player. And the clock is ticking.

That is why playmakers (point guards) have a special role. They read the game on the pitch, react to the situation and adapt the agreed game plan to what is happening at that precise moment. Within an organisation, the equivalent role is often played by middle management and line managers.

Management can set the direction, but those closest to the day-to-day work are the first to see what works and what doesn’t. People who are closest to the work must also be given the opportunity to adapt their approach as the situation demands. If a strategy is handed down to middle management as a ready-made package to be implemented, a huge amount of the organisation’s own intelligence is lost in the process.

Strategic leadership is therefore not just about setting the direction. It is also about building decision-making capacity so that people are able to act appropriately when the leader is not in the room.

Taking a time-out is not about dragging one’s feet, but about strategic leadership

A good coach also knows when it’s worth stopping play and calling the team together. A time-out doesn’t mean that the coach or the players have failed. Quite the opposite. They recognise that the team needs a moment to reassess the situation. In business, a time-out is often called when something goes wrong.

The initial reaction is easy to rectify. Quickly, and ideally in such a way that nobody even realises there was a problem. But sometimes a quick fix makes the next problem even bigger.

A good leader takes a moment to pause before reacting. First, they stop, assess what has happened, and only then decide what to do next. In strategic leadership, this is particularly important when the pressure mounts. When things get hectic, a leader can easily slip back into micromanagement: asking fewer questions, exercising more control and trying to ensure more things themselves.

Leadership based on trust works the other way round. It helps the team to think for themselves.

Consistent performance comes from training

There is one thing that sets sport apart from many organisational development projects: no one imagines that a single day’s coaching would make a team better. Players practise over and over again. They get feedback. They try again. They adjust their technique. They play. They watch the video. They practise some more.

Yet in the world of work, we may still think that a strategy or a new operating model can be ”rolled out” in a single event. We hold a kick-off meeting. We go through the strategy. We raise a glass.

And then, six weeks later, we’ll be wondering why nothing has changed in our daily lives.

Achieving results over the long term requires something else. It requires ongoing discussion, experimentation, feedback and reviewing situations.

We must also be able to analyse failures – or rather, near-failures – without looking for someone to blame. In basketball, we watch the video after the match to see what happened. Not to find someone to blame, but so that we can perform better in the next match. Even when we win, it’s important to repeat this routine and ensure that we also understand why we won. This is how we scale our strategy for success.

The same applies to an organisation. The more we examine things together, the more we can work together to improve them.

The team has to get by without a single hero

There is one more crucial question regarding the implementation of the strategy: what happens if the organisation’s most important person goes on holiday? What if they change jobs? If a large proportion of the knowledge, expertise or decision-making power disappears along with a single person, we do not yet really have a strong team.

A good team has enough depth to ensure it does not fall apart if one player is missing. The same applies to an organisation. This is also one of the reasons why strategic leadership cannot be the sole responsibility of the CEO or the executive team.

The strategy should be reflected in the way different people carry out their work, make decisions and help one another to succeed. This is well reflected in our own philosophy at More Than Group: we are not individual superheroes; rather, our strength comes from the team and from working together.

At the end of the day, it’s not the coach who decides the outcome of the match

Perhaps this is precisely where basketball offers the most interesting lesson in strategic leadership. The coach is responsible for the playbook. He establishes systems, helps the team prepare and reacts to situations.

But when the ball is in the air, he cannot do everything for the players. That is why a good strategy is not a list, as detailed as possible, of what each person should do.

A good strategy provides people with direction, a shared understanding and a goal, as well as the necessary conditions to make good decisions. And, at the same time, a good leader makes themselves a little less indispensable.

Sustained success is achieved when the playbook and day-to-day practice come together. When people understand the direction, have the confidence to put it into practice, and learn together from what happens on the pitch.

Perhaps, when working on strategy, we should occasionally ask ourselves one very simple question: If I were to leave the touchline, would our team still be able to play and win?