Except for that inning I struck out the side when I was 9, my triumphs have largely come off the field. I did love basketball. Five role players on the court at a time — I gave it up after I herniated a disk in my back fighting for a rebound.
Ow that hurt.
The Showtime Lakers team of the 80s inspired me. Led by Magic Johnson, that team won five NBA championships and man were they fun to watch. In addition to Magic, Michael Cooper aka ‘Coop’ would shut you down on defense while he dropped three’s1 and AC ‘Iron Man’ Green dominated the boards.
They could not be stopped; one of the best teams of all time.
Superheroes love a good team. My namesake Spider-Man is a bit of a loner, but even he jumps into the game with The Avengers. I grew up on DC’s Justice League, my kids were into The X-Men, and my current favorite superhero team is The Suicide Squad.
There’s an entire genre of heist movies where the first half is all about putting together just the right team to pull off the job.
At work, I was a good team player. I always had a specialty — and I grew into being a good team lead as well. When I tried my hand at managing, I sucked, so after that, I happily embraced the role of team player or as they euphemistically say in the biz, Individual Contributor or IC — for the next 20 years.
I was even happier when I joined Microsoft. It wasn’t that I was in love with Microsoft as a company — I was more an Apple guy — but I loved the people.
The people at Microsoft were (are) smart and competent, the work was challenging, and teams/ICs were rewarded for doing a good job. I had a lot of great managers and mentors too. I got on good teams and if I felt stuck, I was able to move around.
I didn’t become a manager until my last three years at Microsoft. I joined a brand new org (Microsoft Teams) and found myself in the team building business2. That’s when I realized how hard it can be to find good people and then make a team out of them.
I did a lot of hiring and you never really know how someone is going to work out after just a few conversations. That’s why Part II of this series (It’s not what you know, it’s who you know) is powerful — nothing beats a character reference.
A group of individuals does not a team make. One of my best performing teams was in 2020 — we went through so much together during COVID. Shared experiences are the glue that bonds a team.
At the end of my first year as a manager, I took my team out for dinner — some of the folks meeting in person for the first time — and everyone got a superhero sticker. I handed out Iron Man, The Beast, Rogue, Thor and Baby Groot — everyone on that team had a superpower.
Kobe ‘Mamba’ Bryant was one of the best basketball players of all time — a superstar like Magic. Another great, his teammate Shaquille O’Neal gave this speech at his memorial.
Shaq said the team was complaining that Kobe wasn’t passing enough so he talked to him:
“Kobe, there’s no ‘I’ in team.”
“I know, but there’s an ‘M-E’ in that motherf—.”3
Kobe turned into a great leader on the court as well as teammate. With Shaq he won three more championships for the Lakers and then two more without him.
Go be a star, but also a great teammate — with a great team you can do big things.
I got a video tape from the library starring Michael Cooper called ‘Shoot like Coop’ that I would watch and then practice and play pickup at the park across the street.
Try saying say “my team works on Teams” three times fast.
Michael Jordan, another one of my basketball heroes would say “there may not be an I in team but there is in WIN.” Don’t give up a chance to play/work with the best —worked out ok for Scottie Pippen and Steve Kerr.