Sacha: Welcome to the Greatness is Designed podcast, the podcast where we argue great businesses are designed. I'm your host, Sacha Alimchandani, the Managing Director of BrassRock Consulting. BrassRock Consulting is a Calgary, Alberta based firm that strictly focuses on helping companies grow or handle succession and transition planning, and we do this through management consulting and part-time CFO services. Our hope is that you, the listener, are able to gain some insights from what we do here at BrassRock and are able to apply it within your business

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At BrassRock, a lot of times we have clients who, you know, they go from $5 million in revenue and in a very short time frame go to $15 or $20 million. To the outside person, that looks very instant—it happens very, very fast. But what people don't know is that a lot of the times we're engaged three or four years earlier and are working with that company to build the team, to build the strategy, to get the capital to actually allow that business to achieve those results.

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What we've learned over time is that you can have the right strategy, you can have the right financial forecasts, you can have the right capital, but if you don't have the right people, the right organization with the right people in the right seats, you're just not going to get there. So, a lot of times at BrassRock, we're looking at the organizational structure; we're proactively adjusting it and adapting it, and this is on a continual, regular basis with intention.

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A lot of times when we meet business owners, frankly, their organization is constructed more based on seniority versus qualification. That’s one way of doing it, but we feel that the more productive and accretive way to do it is to actually be proactive and always manage people based on their skill sets and where your business is in its strategic cycle.

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So, we thought in today's interview, we would bring some Canadiana into it and we would talk about hockey, because our current premise is that the way we help adjust organizations—we feel that hockey teams are no different. Now, I don't know very much about hockey, to be honest, but the person who's across from me is Bob Loucks. Bob Loucks, for your background, was the head coach of the Lethbridge Hurricanes, the Medicine Hat Tigers, Tri-City Americans, the Lake Charles Ice Pirates, the Canadian National Team, the Japanese National Team—this man knows hockey. There is no question, and when it comes to building teams, he is the aficionado on the topic. So, Bob, thank you for being on our show.

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Bob: Well, thank you for having me. Hopefully, I can add something to what you're thinking on the business lines.

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Sacha: Let's start at the very basic. As I introduced this podcast, when we go into businesses, if the company's doing $5 million and they want to do $15 or $20, we spend a lot of time figuring out how to get there and we work for a number of years before we get to that $15 million. Now in hockey, can you give me some insight: when you step into a team, are you going for the Memorial Cup or the Stanley Cup right out of the gate, or do you get a baseline and coach from there?

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Bob: Well, in hockey, you're always trying to win the ultimate prize, whatever the league is that you're in. But you have to have a process of how you're going to get there. Where's your team at the present time? How far away are you? Are you even close? You have to evaluate what you have, what you need, and you have to evaluate the people that you have at your disposal. You don't succeed unless you have good people, and that's in every aspect of the team, from the arena staff right through to the General Manager and President of the team. So, you have to make sure that you've built a culture and you've got the right people that fit into what you're trying to do.

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Sacha: You bring up a great point. Team success—I guess everybody, because the team's on the TV all the time, that's what you're focusing on, but it's not just the people on TV. It's the GM, it's the admin assistants, it's everyone.

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Bob: Well, it is. And your scouting staff is ultra-important because they're the people that are out evaluating talent for you. So, you have to make sure that you've got the right people in every aspect of your organization because it's a collective process. Not one person is going to be able to see everybody they need to see—it’s like interviewing for a job; you might have ten people up for the job, but you don't know all ten, so you have to do background work and find out what their strengths and weaknesses are. And that’s kind of what scouts do, or assistant coaches do. Even the players on your team can tell you interesting facts about other players that you might be looking at bringing into the organization. So, as much background information as you can get on anybody from any level is important, so everyone in the organization has to contribute to the success.

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Sacha: When you're engaged on a team, is there a moment where everyone becomes aware of one strategic vision of where that team's going to go in the next year, in the next two years?

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Bob: Well, I think it's an ongoing process. I mean, I think you have to have a realistic evaluation of where you are at the present time and where you're trying to get to and what it's going to take to get to that. You might have some of the pieces in place; you might have most of the pieces in place. But if you haven't been successful or you're not as successful as you want to be—haven't reached your ultimate goal—then obviously there's pieces that you need to add, or philosophies that need to change, strategies that need to change. And so it takes more than one person; it takes a collaboration of multiple people to get to that ultimate goal that you're trying to get to.

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Sacha: A lot of times when we talk to potential prospects who are coming onto the firm, they talk about their success being all tied to one sales guy or one genius engineer. And what I've always felt is, in the news, you always hear about Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or Elon Musk, and yeah, these people are geniuses, but the reality is, in our opinion, that they have a team that supports them that is equally genius, equally dedicated to helping the overall company succeed. Now, dovetailing that into hockey, I'm sure there's star players like Joe Thornton, for example. How do you handle that situation? How do you handle when you have a star player when you're building a team?

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Bob: Well, everybody wants the star. Let's be honest, you want to have the best players at your disposal, but they cost money. (laughing) So, you have to figure out where each person fits in the structure of the team, but you have to have support people. It doesn't matter who the player is, the best player on your team cannot do it by himself. He can't play one against the other six that are on the other team that are on the ice. So his support players have to complement him, and they all have to have a general understanding of what each one of their roles are. That goes from a first-line player, a second-line, a third, a fourth—some of those people are interchangeable up and down the lineup, and those are always valuable players. But they all have to understand what their role is specifically and other things that they're capable of doing when called upon.

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Sacha: So you get this team, you have these support players. How much time do you spend coaching the support players versus the star? I'm sure that's got to be a challenge on a constant basis.

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Bob: Well, you have to coach them all. Obviously, the star players are more capable of doing skill things usually, and in a lot of cases, less capable of doing the actual "grunt work," for a lack of a better term. So, you've got to get them to understand that they have to lead by example too. So, they're expected to do things that maybe make them uncomfortable or are situations that they're not normally in as they come up through their ranks. But they still have to contribute to the overall team, and the "lesser" players—lesser-skilled players, I guess—have a role to do as well.

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But you've got to coach them, get their skill level up. As hockey has gone on over the years, it used to be the fourth-line players just went out and hit everybody. Now, that's not the case. They have to be able to actually play the game; they have to be able to contribute on the scoreboard as well as play the defensive side of the game. So, you've got to coach them all in one form or another, and it's an ongoing process. It never stops, and with a player, when he quits getting better, he's probably going to play himself out of the league.

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Sacha: When you're working with them and you're coaching them on a frequent basis, do you find that every year because you're spending more time coaching the support players—the star is obviously continuing—but there's probably more growth in the support players? Do you find that that team over time just becomes a stronger and stronger team? And maybe you don't do the Memorial Cup or the Stanley Cup in year one, but there's a strong probability of hitting it in years three or four?

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Bob: Well, that's exactly what you're trying to do is you're trying to see where you are, what your "window" is—as what is normally spoken about in sports—you have a window to win. And you've got to figure out where that window is, and usually, that window is a two or three-year period. And you're trying to build towards that two or three-year period and hopefully, in that window, is your opportunity to win. So, it's a process. It's not a sprint; it's a process, and it takes time. And the best skill that you can have is to develop a good culture and a good work ethic within your team, where everybody is on the same page and they're all working for each other. And I think that's the same in any business—to be successful, they all have to work in a collaborative effort. Some people are going to work in one area, some people are going to work in a little bit different area, but they're all working towards that end goal.

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Sacha: It's very much true in organizations. A lot of the success of our clients is tied to the fact that once we figure out where they're going and why they're doing what they're doing, getting everybody in the right places and motivating and nurturing them really is the precipice of why these companies succeed at the end of the day, and it's sort of no different than hockey, actually.

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Bob: There's so many different aspects of the game of hockey that you don't actually see when you're watching it on TV or live in an arena that goes into winning. And winning is the ultimate goal, obviously, as in business, the ultimate goal is to succeed and make money. And "wins" are what you measure yourself with in hockey, and it takes different skill sets from different people to work towards that common end.

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And you've got to bring people along. Some people come along quicker than others, but it's just a process and it takes time. You're never going to win the ultimate goal if it's a Stanley Cup with a bunch of 22 or 23-year-old players. They might be your star players for five years ahead, but they're not your star player now. So they have to understand that they've got a lot of growth to come in their game, and you've got to make sure that when they're ready to win, your older guys aren't too old to be able to contribute as well. So that's where that window is—if you look at say, a Washington Capitals with Ovechkin, he's getting towards the end of his career, Sidney Crosby, Carey Price, guys like that—they're getting towards the end, so they need to find the players that complement them now so they can win now. That's the ultimate challenge is to get everybody at the right stage in their career to be productive enough to win.

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And in business, I think it's the same thing. Have we got the right people in place to get us to the next step, and have we got the people coming in behind that can complement and keep the process moving along?

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Sacha: That's exactly it. The training process and the recruiting process never end. But it sounds like in hockey, it's the exact same story. You're always monitoring your team's performance or your player's performance, and you're always finding new people however you can to spend time and train and to be your next star players.

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Bob: Well, that's exactly right. And you're also monitoring the other teams that you're playing against too. What are they doing? What makes them successful? What can we take from their game? In hockey, you call it "rob and steal." So whatever somebody else does that you know works, you steal it from their playbook and put it in yours. And I think that's the same in business: when you see what other people do that are successful, or something that you can do to add to your skill set, then you add it.

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Sacha: And this sort of dovetails into a really good question I had, which was: a lot of times in business, people give up too soon because the competitor has, in their eyes, more talent, more capital—there's a myriad of reasons or excuses. We believe you can always make it happen; you just got to make sure you're investing in the right places and you have the right strategy. And I imagine in hockey, it's—you're confronted with the exact same thing. You're always hearing about other teams that have more money, that have more star players. It's probably nonstop.

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Bob: Well, and to me, those are excuses, and if you're looking for excuses, you're never going to be successful. One of my favorite sayings has always been: "If your best isn't always good enough, you have to do whatever it takes." And you have to get that mentality in your people so that they are always striving to get better. One percent a day adds up. You're not going to be at your best every day, but you're always striving for perfection, knowing that you're not going to be perfect, but if you're not striving to be perfect, you're never going to get better.

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Sacha: I think that's one of the key requirements of being a good coach—getting people to motivate on their bad days and getting people to really excel on their good days.

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Bob: If you get people motivated and they're excited about what they're doing, they work a lot harder. And if they know that they're being appreciated for what they're doing, they're going to work even that much harder. And when they see they have a little success, then they want more success, and it just keeps building—it just runs like a rapid wildfire.

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Sacha: It reminds me of this Netflix documentary, The Last Dance, with the story of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and it's kind of the same thing. Once you have the right five guys together, or six guys or whatever it was, you had a team that was unstoppable, right?

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Bob: Well, exactly. And I think Michael Jordan—I think that's a good example. Michael Jordan as a player was terrific, and he used one or two players a lot to make him the player that he was. He left and went to play baseball for a couple of years; he came back to basketball. I think he was a much better basketball player when he came back to basketball because he had empathy for the other players on his team. When he played baseball, he wasn't as good as he thought he was. So now he understood, "You know what? In basketball, I have the skill level that other guys don't have, and maybe I need to understand a little bit more about what makes them work and bring them along within the team to contribute to the team, because they don't have the same skill level as him." Doesn't mean that they're not capable of helping the team win. And I think he had a lot more empathy for the number three and four and five and six and seven, eight players on the team than what he had before he went to baseball.

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Sacha: You hear of these people with mega salaries that a lot of times the viewer thinks that capital is no object in hockey—basically, there's tons of money and we can burn it and we've got lots of it to go around. But is that really true? Because in business, I'll be honest with you—whether you're Amazon or Tesla or a mom-and-pop plumber—capital is the lifeblood of the organization, and you are stuck. Whatever you want to achieve, it's got to be within a budget. That's just the reality. So is hockey the same way?

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Bob: Yeah, I think so. I mean, they have salary caps now, but there's still a budget. And I think you always look at where your team is at the moment, and you want to spend to the cap because this is your window to win, or do you want to be a little bit more conservative while you're developing some of your younger players that you know in two or three years are going to put you in that window to win, and then that's when you spend? I think it's somewhat similar. You're always working on a budget, whether it's a tighter budget or a looser budget, but I think it all depends on your circumstances at the time. And I think businesses are the same: they look at the market—where's the market going? Is this a time to spend or is this the time to tighten the belt? I think it's the same in hockey.

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Sacha: A lot of times with companies, we service one target market and we're going to make a jump to service a new target market that has a whole bunch of new complexities. But we spend a long period of time and we get these people strong, and then when we do the big push to open up into that new market, that's when we open up the floodgates with regards to capital, but it's a slow process because now's the time to jump.

Bob: Right. And I think that's the same in sport. You look at where your window is, you develop what you have, and you say, "Okay, here's our window—now we're going to spend." I think that's the same in business. You forecast and you hope that your forecasting's right.

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Sacha: I cannot stress how important forecasting is for new product lines or new plans, but in hockey, you're forecasting future salaries and new player demands if you have to recruit new players. Even when it comes to, I guess, looking at shifts in the organization, it's not Bob and his sole opinion saying, "I'm going to shift this team in this way." It's a collaborative effort, I imagine, from all levels of the organization to figure out what's the best answer.

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Bob: Well, it is. In hockey, it's always when the coach is mad at a player and asks the GM to trade him—wait two weeks and ask him again, because you don't want to make that knee-jerk reaction just because the player did something to tick you off or he's struggling a little bit with something. Sometimes you just have to show some patience, show some belief in the player, and work with him and get him through whatever obstacle's in front of him and you move on. Making a knee-jerk reaction usually burns you.

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Sacha: How often do you feel that you should be reviewing your team or your organizational structure? For us, we're doing it all the time—it never ends.

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Bob: Daily. It never ends. You're always looking to improve, and you can be perfectly happy with what you have, but you're always looking to get better. So, I think it's daily and I think it's by everybody in the organization, and it's a collaborative effort.

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Sacha: I think what we've pretty much established through this podcast is that really, at the end of the day, when it comes to building a business and building a hockey team, they're very akin—they're very, very identical. There might be different eccentricities to both, obviously, but generally speaking, it's fundamentally the same challenges. Bob, I can't say thank you enough. I know nothing about hockey, so—

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Bob: And I don't know much about business.

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Sacha: There you go! So thank you for taking the time, I greatly appreciate it.

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Bob: Oh, thank you. It was a pleasure.

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Sacha: We hope you've enjoyed today's podcast, an exploratory discussion into how building a hockey team and players and thinking about organizational structure is really no different than how you have to think about organizational structure in your business. My name is Sacha Alimchandani. Thank you for listening to Greatness is Designed. If you want to listen to other episodes, go to brassrockconsulting.com/podcast or wherever you source your podcasts.