The Last Dance: A Business Leader’s Master Class, And Much Else Besides

ESPN docu-series The Last Dance has just finished. 

It concluded after ten episodes run over a five-week period watched by an audience of 5.6 million. And as it did so, the media lit up with comment about it. Who would have thought that a television series about basketball would cause so many digital words to flow? But then again this series is about no ordinary team, and no ordinary leader(s) of a team. 

In the 1990s the Chicago Bulls were THE basketball team. During that decade the Bulls won six NBA Championships. They dominated their opponents; they dominated the game; but those basketball players moved from the basketball court into the mainstream as a team that showed how it could be done in life and in business as much as in sports. 

At the core of that success for the Chicago Bulls stood two men. One famous and one well known but perhaps not as famous, the former is Michael Jordan, the latter is Phil Jackson. 

Jordan and Jackson must be one of the greatest ever pairings in sport. Jordan was one of the most talented basketball players ever, if not the most talented. To watch his play infused with such energy, skill and passion is to have a master class in how an elite athlete experiences and lives his chosen sport. His on court leadership style is uncompromising and unrelenting. His demands from his team superhuman, but then he made the same demands upon his own performance. This was a team of winners; losers need not apply. This was the basketball equivalent of the French Foreign Legion with its motto: March or Die! If for the Chicago Bulls more a case of Win or Get Off the Court!   

If Johnson was a talismanic presence on court, then off at the side was the equally enigmatic Jackson. His style of leadership was as different from Jordan as the two men’s personalities. Jackson worked from the inside out of each of his players. He observed them closely both on and off the court. He talked with them, really getting to know them, what their motivation was, what made them tick. The challenge for Jackson was to integrate a bunch of talented individuals into a team. He worked on the “difficult edges” of personality, smoothing and softening, before sharpening that into the collective team thrust. Everyone on the team knew exactly where he stood on any given day with Jackson. Nothing was said to others that was not said to the player’s face - openly and calmly. The resultant loyalty he gained from all this was shown on court with every score. 

Business leaders would do well to give The Last Dance a watch. A team went from good, to superb, to legendary in a matter of seasons. So much so the Bulls are still talked about to this day. And the viewing figures for the ESPN series suggests that interest if anything is growing.

I took much from the series, learned something, which is not something you say often after watching television. For a start successful leaders know what they need in and from their team. They then look for the talent necessary to make that happen. Leaders see beyond personalities to see talent, potential or present. Personality you can work with, but talent must be there to begin with too. 

Once a talented group is assembled then the target of success is established. Your job as leader is to watch that team you have created go for it. Sometimes you’ll need to reshuffle the pack as the “game” plays out. Other times, you need to drop players. And then there are the real stars. Once you know who they are you need to look after them like a mother with an infant. That’s not to say you treat them with kid gloves or give into their every whim. Not at all, instead, you watch them more closely, you berate them more often; you spend more time on and with them. It goes back to what I say time and again. In business as in life it’s about relationships. Once those relationships are established and the team is playing for you with your goal now theirs – as was the case with Jackson and Jordan and the Bulls. And once you have that, as seen in The Last Dance, you have a force of nature almost unstoppable. 

On a different note, the success of The Last Dance confirms my own thinking around media. We love stories. But it seems today more than ever we love stories about sports, or rather the men and women who play sports at the highest levels, especially those with almost preternatural gifts. 

To that end, it just so happens we at Alamo Pictures have a basketball documentary in the works. And alongside that an exciting football podcast like no other out there. Stay tuned, for more news on these. 

Finally, for all of us this week has been depressing. The current news Stateside has been bleaker than even a pandemic can make it. Thinking about The Last Dance gave me hope in this time, however. For on display in this series was all that was best about America. A multi-racial sports team, with a black leader on the court and a white coach on the sidelines, transcended any and all differences and became the best, perhaps the best ever, in its chosen field. 

Yes, The Last Dance has come just at the right time, for sports media, but it may also have come just in time to remind Americans of what’s possible.