112th Edition
The Best don’t always make the team
Noted author, Heather MacDonald, wrote an interesting essay recently titled, “Trump Takes His Biggest Step Yet Toward Restoring Meritocracy.” As she explains, restoring meritocracy would involve eliminating disparate-impact theory from civil rights analysis and enforcement. Serious stuff. Perhaps I’ll dive into that in a future blog, but for today’s edition, I want to discuss meritocracy.
According to Merriam-Webster, meritocracy is a system, organization, or society in which people are chosen and moved into positions of success, power, and influence on the basis of their demonstrated abilities and merit. This may all seem relatively straight forward, but it is anything but.
John Wooden used to explain that he was looking for the best five players, not the five best players. Coach Brooks, the coach of the 1980 gold medal winning U.S. Hockey team, told his assistant coach, Craig Patrick, that he wasn’t looking for the best players, he was looking for the right players. Even in these situations, as straight forward as they may seem on the surface, the concept of meritocracy is complicated. In other words, what makes a team, organization, community, or country successful depends on more than abilities and merit. It involves individual sacrifice, commitment, perseverance, and a host of other intangibles, or character traits that can be difficult to measure. Great coaches and great leaders understand this. I would contend that bureaucrats, in most cases, do not.
More recently we come to the curious case of Shedeur Sanders, the talented quarterback from the University of Colorado. Initially expected to be a first-round draft pick, Sanders wasn’t selected until the fifth round, by the Cleveland Browns. In a nutshell, teams who passed on selecting Sanders may have wondered whether he was going to be a positive influence on their teams. Again, meritocracies are inherently complicated.
Coaches as well as business leaders often talk about recruiting character. Sounds logical, but unfortunately, character is sometimes hard to identify. Often you don’t discover the lack of it until you are in a situation where you need it desperately. In other words, adversity doesn’t create character as much as it reveals it. Which is largely the reason why teams and organizations get it wrong all the time. General managers and business executives hire people hoping they will fill a particular role, fit in well with the existing team, but also have all the valuable intangibles as well. Some do, and if enough of them do, championships are possible. But it only takes a few misfits to ruin team chemistry. Even one selfish or dishonest player or employee can destroy the culture of an organization.
I wish Mr. Sanders the best of luck in Cleveland. If he realizes, through this embarrassing experience, that being an important component of a team means it isn’t all about him, perhaps he will have a chance to be successful and maybe even an impactful leader. Time will tell.
Despite the inherent complexity of meritocracies, it is a far better approach than a system relying on government mandates to produce equal outcomes or even equal opportunities. There are just too many variables to get it right. If you want to read more about government’s failure in this area read Jason Riley’s book – “Please Stop Helping Us.”
I’ll end this blog with some advice for the young and aspiring generation. First, you make yourself most valuable to an organization when you demonstrate servant leadership and a consistency in putting others before yourself. Great players love playing with someone who will pass them the ball. Second, commit yourself to living a life of integrity. Be dependable, reliable, and do the right thing all the time. Echoes of Lombardi, as Jerry Kramer once said. Thirdly, work harder than anyone else. Most likely you will discover the harder you work, the luckier you will get. Finally, don’t let anyone set a limit on what you can accomplish in your life. Could this be valuable advice for every generation?
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Michael Kayes
*These views are my personal opinions and are not the viewpoints of any company or organization.