Basketball and Project Management?

A big part of Project Management is the management of resources. And the most critical resource is of course human resource. To achieve anything worthwhile it is critical to be able to build an A-Team. Recruiting, however, just the start. Building them into a real team - now that is the key.

This is also true for team based sports. I recently encountered a couple of articles that can serve to provide insights into this area of team management - which can be something of a black art to many people.

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First are some excerpts from - I Can’t Accept Not Trying. Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence. Here's the main takeaway:

"I’d rather have five guys with less talent who are willing to come together as a team than five guys who consider themselves stars and aren’t willing to sacrifice.

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."

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Secondly, there's this more recent article in Fast Company magazine, What LeBron James And The Miami Heat Teach Us About Teamwork, exploring this same concept but in a slightly different context - the experiment by the Miami Heat to create a superstar team with the express goal of winning the NBA Championship. This article investigates the (ongoing) trials, experiences and adventures in gelling together the "Heatles" team of Lebron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade each of whom were the star player in their teams prior to participating in this adventure/experiment. I found this treatment of the subject very informative and enlightening from the perspective of team and project management - especially the creation of a team to achieve very specific and short term goals.

Imagine building an A-Team for a startup project.