PHIL JACKSON - ZEN AT WORK
Like life, basketball is messy and unpredictable. It has its way with you, no matter how hard you try to control it. The trick is to experience each moment with a clear mind and open heart. When you do that, the game - and life - will take care of itself.
When most of us think the ultra-competitive world of professional sports, the "clear mind and open heart" of Zen is not usually what comes to mind. Coaching professional athletes these days is a special challenge. Most pros earn millions of dollars, far more than their coaches. The biggest stars have entourages that follow them around, speak through agents who are only interested in money, and have been told since childhood that they are ‘special’. By the time they reach the ‘pros’, they neither think nor act like normal humans - because they have not had what any of us would consider a normal life.
The challenge for a coach, as Phil Jackson brilliantly points out, is this: Our society places such a high premium on individual achievement it’s easy for players to get blinded by their own self-importance and lose a sense of interconnectedness, the essence of teamwork.
Sound familiar? The parallels to many workforces are direct and inarguable.
Phil Jackson won an NBA championship in 1973 as a member of the New York Knicks. At the victory party, he was nagged by a voice inside his head which asked "Is this all there is?". He realized how ephemeral the victory was: sweet as it might be, the next day he was simply "back to work". All his years of playing and practicing had finally paid off, and he was left with an empty feeling.
"There must be more" he said to himself.
The moment began a spiritual journey which brought him to Zen meditation and the religious practices of several Native American tribes. He had grown up in a strict Christian background in which he had not found what he now needed.
After the pros, he began a career coaching in the minor leagues. He was convinced that he could somehow weave success and spirituality together. As he looked at the best basketball teams, he realized that they all operated with one star and a court of supporters. Their coaches, more often than not, tried to motivate their players by yelling at them.
He knew from his playing days that players all yearn to connect with something bigger than themselves, and they typically find it when they ‘lose themselves’ completely in the moment of the game. To do that requires that players surrender themselves to the team’s greater good, so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of the parts.
Easy to say, hard to pull off in the ego driven world of professional sports
Jackson began introducing meditation and other focusing techniques to his minor league teams. His goal was to clear their minds to be receptive to the flow of the team, and to shut down the mental chatter so that they could be completely ‘present’ in the game.
It was, of course, met with skepticism. He designed on-court strategies which involved every member of the team handling the ball equally, along with equalized court time. This was completely unheard of - the best players always played the most. The protests were loud and dramatic, but he stuck to his beliefs. Slowly, he saw his team think and act like a team, and when the results improved significantly, even the skeptics were somewhat silenced.
By the time Jackson landed with the Chicago Bulls in 1988, his belief that teams could be more successful if they focused on the spirit of the whole rather than the heroics of the stars, was showing fruit.
The Bulls were the first real test to his beliefs, his system and his resolve. Michael Jordan was the greatest player in basketball, and teammate Scottie Pippen was not far behind him. It was natural for the other players to feed the ball constantly to Michael and then sit and watch him make one of his unbelievable moves. But when the opposition double or triple teamed Michael, nothing happened.
Jackson started by articulating a ‘vision’ for the team. Heck most businesses don’t have a vision that means anything. He then worked for years to get the team - and Jordan himself - to move the ball between everyone so that anyone could be a scoring threat at any moment. Michael’s scoring dropped - the fans screamed - but the team started winning more games. Everyone else’s points went up.
In the locker room the players meditated together, and the team room was outfitted with Native American artifacts. Outsiders considered it crazy, and wondered at the intelligence of any coach who would put a plan in place that actually reduced the points-per-game average of its greatest stars.
But it changed the Bulls from being a one or two star team to being the most balanced ensemble in the game. The more they gelled as a team - the less selfish they played - the more they won. As they mastered his on court system, they became a steamroller - a dynasty - winning 6 championships between 1991 and 1998.
Obviously there is an intellectual component to playing basketball. Strategy is important. But once you have done the mental work, there comes a point here you have to throw yourself into the action and put your heart on the line. That means not only being brave, but also being compassionate toward yourself, your teammates and your opponents. This idea was an important building block of my philosophy as a coach. More than anything else, what allowed the Bulls to sustain a high level of excellence was the players’ compassion for each other.
"The players compassion for each other". It is the type of phrase that you never hear in sports - except with championship teams.
Phil Jackson retired after his 6th championship, but not for long. He came back to a new challenge - the LA Lakers and their stars (and egos) Shaquille O’Neil and Kobe Bryant.
Again, Jackson was unafraid to build a spiritual system for the team both on and off the court.
Again, the egos protested. But when the Lakers won three championships in a row, the cynics were again silenced. Their win this year was icing on the cake.
Phil Jackson will go down in the books as the coach with the most wins in NBA history. But what I really love about him is his fearlessness, and it is something from which most business leaders can learn.
Imagine a room full of spoiled, ego driven, obscenely paid athletes walking into the team room to find it adorned with Native American spiritual artifacts. Imagine assembling the team for the first meditation session. Imagine the first game plan where the stars and support players were to get equal court time and were instructed to move the ball between everyone.
Phil has done this over and over and over for decades. He has taken uncontrollable egos and tamed them, transformed bitter rivals into collaborators, given unheard of opportunities to men judged "support players", and done it without the ‘in your face’ scream fests too often witnessed at courtside.
We teach our kids (I hope) that sports like basketball are about ‘team’. But as the kids get older, when there is something on the line (a scholarship, money, status), this too often gets forgotten. The "me" takes over.
Phil Jackson has shown us that playing for the best of the team not just ourselves brings not just victory, but the deeper satisfaction and meaning for which most of us yearn.
For that, Phil Jackson, you have my unending respect and gratitude. I hope coaches and parents everywhere have read your books and learned from the master.
