As everyone looks for lessons to understand the Jeremy Lin ‘Linsanity’ phenomenon, I viewed it from my lens of having interviewed 250 chief executive officers and as a Knicks fan following Jeremy Lin before he became a sensation. So in seeking truth, I decided to crunch some numbers. The results were compelling and revealed that there are definitive lessons CEOs can learn and apply from Jeremy Lin.
This article has two parts: first my analysis of Lin with CEO lessons, and second, direct CEO perspective where I talk with Michael Chen, recent CEO of GE Media Finance and President of an NBC News Business, about Jeremy Lin.
Identify the superstar on your bench
An unexpected insight came when I compared the 11 games Jeremy Lin played for the Knicks before his breakthrough with the 11 games he played after Feb. 4. I calculated points and assists per minute. The finding: In Lin’s 11 games after his breakthrough playing an average of 34 minutes per game he averaged 23.9 points per game and 9.1 assists per game; in his games prior to breakthrough his averages using 34 minutes per game would have been 20.4 points per game and 9.7 assists per game. Net/net, before his breakthrough, Jeremy Lin was already achieving at the same high level, but was just under the radar.
To coach Mike D’Antoni’s credit, the moment Mr. Lin had just one great game, he immediately made him a starter. The message to CEOs is look under the radar in your organization — analyze P&Ls of overlooked businesses or current smaller untapped markets, seek breakthrough ideas from the depth of your organization, and view carefully potentially overlooked data because there may be a superstar on the bench.
Play team ball
When Jeremy Lin took over the point guard position, the Knicks won nine of 11 games; during the prior games the Knicks lost nine of 11. And during this turnaround, they were mostly playing without their two perennial all-stars. So what happened? The Knicks created a winning corporate culture. Once a culture is defined, the key to a team is everyone has a role.
As it turns out Jeremy Lin’s role as point guard is what I define as a high-leverage position. He orchestrates. Mr. Lin’s passing ability immediately made everyone else better, and low-percentage shots became high-percentage shots. For example, Steve Novak prior to Mr. Lin’s leadership was a background character without a defined role, averaging only three points a game; since Feb. 4 Mr. Novak has averaged 12 points a game off the bench and is a top five NBA leader with 46-per-cent three-point shooting percentage, and is now looked upon as an option to take the final shot of the game.
Playing team ball, the Knicks followed their new leader Jeremy Lin’s lead and started playing team defence as well. The Knicks 11 games prior let teams score an average of 96 points per game. The 11 games with Mr. Lin leading the Knicks became one of the NBA’s elite teams holding teams to just 90 points per game. Knick fans witnessed something they hadn’t really seen since 1973 when Frazier, Bradley, DeBusschere, Reed, Lucas and Monroe played true team basketball team offense and defence. I have fond memories as a kid sitting with my dad watching the beauty of team basketball, and now I can sit with my kids and witness team ball together.
The message to CEOs is that team ball wins, and the first step to team ball is having a defined culture and identifying high-leverage positions whose occupants make everyone else better. Just like a winning coach has 48 minutes of intense team basketball, a winning CEO has each associate successfully playing their roles and integrating them with others every day – playing team ball a full 48 minutes.
To gain further perspective adding to the two insights – identify the super star on your bench and play team ball – following are some questions I asked recent CEO Michael Chen about his take on Jeremy Lin.
Michael, as a recent CEO, what do you think companies can learn from “Linsanity”?
Robert, every corporation probably has 20 to 30 hidden Jeremy Lin’s in its organization. No, I’m not talking about just Harvard grads or Asian-Americans. I am talking about employees who have the potential to become future leaders, but for one reason or another have yet to be discovered. As corporations get bigger, bureaucracy inevitably creeps in.
