NBA Champion Shane Battier on why data and culture are the secret to success

Shane Battier: People always want to show how valuable they are to a team. Just start by controlling everything that you can control. It's amazing that when you do that, you develop the reliability gene. My teammates, my coaches, they never, ever, ever, ever had to worry, is Bat ready to play tonight? Because I always was. The two most important factors that will determine the trajectory of your team. is the interplay between trust and what we call mission focus. Or ability to focus on a singular goal. The interplay of those two factors explain everything about your team. People on coherent teams look around and say, Who has it better than us? Nobody. And so as a result, there's super low turnover. That is the goal as managers, of finding people who can raise the level of trust and the levels of mission focus to create those gelled teams. Because those are the teams that have lasting power. Those are the teams that win. I don't care what industry you're talking about.

Damon Klotz: I'm sure many of you listening have heard of Michael Lewis, the journalist and author who wrote the book Moneyball, which then went on to become a Hollywood film starring Brad Pitt. They looked at the baseball team, the Oakland A's, and how they were using data to help them win. Several years later, Michael actually wrote an article for the New York Times called the No Stat All Star about a player whose stats on the surface weren't really shining or standing out. They were making their team better and helping them win. Today on the Culture First Podcast, we are speaking to that player. And that player is Shane Battier. Shane was a two time NBA champion with the Miami Heat and his use of data and how he was playing is just a remarkable story about why data is important, how to help your team get better, and why we shouldn't just look at traditional metrics when it comes to success. So this is going to be a fascinating interview on the purpose of, teams, how we value them, the role players. And yeah, that's just as an NBA fan, this is an absolute treat for me. So I really hope you enjoy this episode of the Culture First podcast with my guest Shane Battier. So today on the Culture First podcast, I'm looking forward to chatting with Shane Battier. So Shane, thank you so much for joining me.

Shane Battier: Damon, thanks for having me. It's my pleasure.

Damon Klotz: So I'm extremely excited to have you on the podcast and I know the wider team here at Culture Amp have learned a lot from you recently, and I'm excited to share that with our audience here on Culture First. At the highest level, who's someone who's clicked on this podcast episode, they might expect to learn things about like high performance lessons from an NBA player, but what made you a different player and what makes this interview probably a little bit different than what people might be expecting is your love and use of data, your sort of focus on culture, the role that you play to help a team win, and your interest in technology. So if you're just an NBA fan, you clicked on this, please stay, but if you're not, hopefully there's a lot more to take away. So if that sounds about right, shall we dive into the conversation?

Shane Battier: Let's do it.

Damon Klotz: So my opening question that I always ask guests, and I'm super excited to hear how you answer this, because I know there's like you know, the famous part of your career that people know, and then there's your sort of post professional career. But the question I always ask guests is if a curious 10 year old stumbles upon you on the street, looks up at you and says, excuse me, what do you do for work? How do you answer?

Shane Battier: Well, first of all, I said, well, I used to use this height for some, something very, uh,useful and that that was basketball for many, many years. I, I played 13 years in the NBA after a 30 year basketball career. that, that took me around the world. I retired 10 years ago, from the NBA. And ever since then I've, worn many hats and trying to recreate the magic of my NBA career. I've, I sit on a few boards. I do a lot of corporate speaking, talking about teams and culture, a lot of the. themes that we'll talk about today. I run a nonprofit foundation, the Battier Take Charge Foundation. I'm launching my own podcast, actually it's September 10th, called The Glue Guys, where we'll talk about a lot of the themes today about being a catalyst within an organization. And I try to be a, a good dad and a good husband and try to mix in a little bit of golf so that, that's what I do for, my daily grind.

Damon Klotz: I love it. Well, yes, as a, uh, fellow podcast, host, get ready for an exciting journey of, uh, when you start overthinking simple things like how do I construct a sentence and what does a voiceover mean and why does it take me so long to put simple sentences together so we can have conversations about that in a few months when you go down that

Shane Battier: Commiserate together. Yes.

Damon Klotz: I want to start, my sort of intro questions are a little bit about foundational context and just some background. So people can get a chance to know you a little bit better and I want to maybe go back to your time as a kid at school. You learned very on about the power of being on a team and how you can feel a sense of inclusion based on your role in the team. Like I've heard you talk about growing up as a mixed race kid in Detroit you know, you stood out, you were taller than others. So can you tell me about your early experience of just those feelings of inclusion and the importance of being on a team? And did you think that kid had any idea that that early lesson would end up actually being part of your story, to end up in the NBA one day?

Shane Battier: I, I wish I would've had that forset. I I was a misfit,I was different than all of my friends. When you're, when you're a kid, you just want to be like everybody else. And yeah, you don't, you don't want to stick out. All right. You don't, you don't learn to appreciate individuality to your, to your much older. And so I tell people that I grew up mixed, tall and poor. Okay. I was the only kid in my town outside of Detroit, Michigan that, you know, had a black dad and a white mom. Okay, this is, this is the mid 80s. Okay, there, there are lots of role models now. I had no role models about what it meant to be a mixed race. And so I was always questioning, where do I belong? Do I belong anywhere? Am I just a cultural misfit? we were very poor. We did not have much money. I had patches on my clothes, nothing but hand me downs. I was embarrassed to have people at my house. And I was a foot taller than everybody else. All right. I was that kid who always had to carry around his birth certificate to every little league baseball game. Cause no one believed that I was like six, you know, six, seven, eight years old. Cause I looks like I was much older. And so like wherever I turned, I was different. I was an outcast. And that's just, it's just really hard as humans. And I realized the most important. Lesson I ever learned was, you know what, at recess, all right, at lunch break, when I'm playing baseball with my friends and basketball and football and soccer, no one cares about my differences. No one cares that I'm a misfit. All they care about is, hey, did we win that game? And so, intrinsically, I became so focused on how can I help my friends win? And that mindset always gave me a place at the table. So, like, my sole focus on, and every team ever was on, basketball and beyond, was how do I help my friends, my teammates, my locker room, just be better and win?

Damon Klotz: Like there was a very wise kid running around the streets of Detroit back then. Maybe you, uh, didn't know the sort of, you know, the macro context of company culture, leadership, and what makes for a great team back then. But I think that's one of the things that really shapes us as children is some of those early experiences and those feelings that we have. And then we start, You know, if we have a more curious kind of aspect on life, then you start saying, well, why is it this way? Like, why do I feel like this in this situation? And part of us as adults is how do we keep that curiosity in play so that we keep those questions front of mind.

Shane Battier: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. It was the defining moment of my childhood and I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade that stress and that grind and that anxiety for anything, it really shaped me.

Damon Klotz: So like you mentioned, we're going to talk a lot of things about culture and leadership and data or data, depending on where you're listening. And before we dive into the sort of the really, you know, big hitting subjects like that, I did want to geek out for just a little bit of a second because, it's not every day I speak to a, you know, ex NBA player. So I just need to give you my quick little history of like, and probably for the listeners who've been listening to the show for, you know, since 2019, probably haven't heard me talk about, My main sport is football or soccer. That's like my religion, my chosen religion. I, you know, die on the hill of being a Chelsea fan, which is not an easy place to be. but growing up in Australia, you know, basketball was kind of like a Hollywood sport. Like my kind of introduction to basketball was, you know, like Space Jam, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, like larger than life characters. And then. In 2015, with Culture Amp I had the chance to move out to the Bay Area and I lived in San Francisco for, you know, several years. And timing wise, you probably couldn't have timed it any better to move to the Bay Area to become a Warriors fan. you know, and I got to sort of witness Steph Curry and obviously KD and Clay Thompson and Draymond Green. And, but then also like Andre Iguodala, who was probably one of those glue guys and, you know, made teams better. But you did play with someone who has a very special place in my heart, which is LeBron James. And he's special because, we share the same birthday. Uh, and I always tell this story that we have what I think is the worst birthday of the year, which is December 30, which is the last day of the year that everyone tries to be a good person. Cause I've already had the gluttonous Christmas period.

Shane Battier: Yep.

Damon Klotz: Go out the night like after on the 30th is when they have salad and sleep. But no one says no to LeBron James' birthday party, but that's a story for another day. We're not here to talk about December 30th birthdays. I wanted to frame that whole story about basketball with an intro question that we use, which is we have these cards from Esther Perel, who's a relationship therapist, and she's an advisor to Culture Amp. And I've got a card here that says, I've never shared the whole story about the time. So I wonder if there's a story about your time from, you know, playing alongside someone like LeBron, who everyone kind of knows. Is there a story that you haven't shared about your experience? You know, playing alongside him.

Shane Battier: First of all, LeBron is one of my favorite teammates of all time. Obviously in my book. The GOAT, greatest player of all time. but when you're at that level, you could be a real jerk, right? LeBron was not, he was an amazing teammate. LeBron always addressed my wife by her first name. He always picked up my kids and like play with them. He always came to my, my charity events and picked up the mic and toasted me or, or say, you know, try to raise money for our foundation. Like those things, like they go so far. And so like, I would go over the wall for LeBron James because he was an amazing, amazing teammate. And, I know him in a much different way than I think the general population knows him. And I saw him at tough moments and you'd say, Oh, well, what, what tough moments has LeBron James had? And I'll never forget, we were playing the Boston Celtics. And it was the playoffs and Boston Celtics, obviously a very heated rivalry there. And there was no love lost when we went to Boston and we were actually walking to dinner and a bunch of, you know, six, eight tall black guys going to dinner. And Boston Celtics fan sees us, rolls on the window and says, Hey, LeBron. I hate you. You suck. And speeds off. And, you know, for a moment, you realize like, look, as great as LeBron is, he's a human. And like, no one likes to be told they suck and they're hated. Right? And LeBron's got great spirit and great humor, but like, you know, as his friend, like felt for him that like, he's had to deal with the scrutiny and this, eye on him since he was 13 years old. And people saying crazy, crazy, crazy things. I mean, people said crazy things to me in my time, but like, probably not as much as, as LeBron James. And, you know, it speaks to sort of his, his humanity that he, he takes it in stride. and, you know, we said, man, don't listen to that guy. I got that guy's an absolute clown. Now it helped that LeBron goes out and scores 45 points next, next game and puts it right back in the Celtics face. So thanks for that guy, whoever did that. But, You know, it's amazing to go on a journey with somebody and especially someone who you, who you love to see, have success and know that person is real and that person cares about you and you, you care about that person and that that's what being a great teammate and, and having an amazing culture is all about. And so that, that story about LeBron, you know, I remember his, his highlights. And they're amazing, but I remember the lowlights just as much and, you know, how lucky I was to be with him in those moments to say, man, don't worry about that clown.

Damon Klotz: I think that's why I love these questions and these cards, cause they really allow members to come together and have human stories about, you know, how do I make you feel as a team member? How can I support you? What are the things that you'll remember about me? What are the stories I don't know about you that shape your professional resume based on your personal one and the way that you support each other? So yes, you know, there'll be plenty of highlight reels for, you know, that live on, on the internet forever. But the stories about. How someone responded to your family or how they supported you in those times is what makes for great teams, which is one of the things that we're obviously going to talk about. But this show is also called Culture First and I would love to, I know you talk a lot about culture and the role that it plays. So how do you define culture?

Shane Battier: culture to me is the lowest denomination of behavior that a group is willing to accept. Okay. And, you know, when you ask most people about what culture is, they give you the highest ideals. of what like high culture is, and that that's the perception and that that's somewhat true, but I always think of it, what, what is the lowest common behavior that your group will accept that will shape your team more than anything? You know, are, are you a, a team, a culture? And I, I stole that from Pat Riley from the Miami Heat. I wish I would've came up with that, but when said that, I'm like, that's right. It's the lowest common denominator. Are you a group that, It's okay to show up 10 minutes late to a 9 o'clock meeting, or is it, no, this is not negotiable. You will never be late for the 9am, right? Is this a culture where, you know, making fun of someone is accepted and that's the lowest form of behavior? Or is your culture, you know, everyone has to feel safe and welcome and appreciated in our group? And so it's kind of like the, what's the worst your group was willing to accept that will define what's the trajectory of your team and your culture is going to be.

Damon Klotz: Yeah, I love that. It's obviously culture at the end of the day is just a collection of behaviors and it's behaviors set to things like, you know, values, mission and vision, but also, how you end up wanting to achieve that success. You can get there by going the high road or the low road. And if you're willing to accept the low road, that deteriorates a culture over time. And it also determines who you bring in, what you're willing to accept from new team members and other things, which is something I'll talk about as well. So, and maybe the other fundamental that I think is really interesting is I've also heard you talk about the different characteristics of teams that you played on and you walked through the four types of teams that you experienced throughout your career. And when I heard that, I thought, that's really cool. Useful not just from someone who's like maybe geeks out on the dynamics of sports teams, but also just the way that we think about the teams that we've enjoyed being part of. So could you share those four types of teams?

Shane Battier: Yeah, I've been part of so many wonderful teams. I've been on teams that have been struggling. And when I retired from the NBA, I actually went into the front office of the Miami heat and was tasked to lead the data analytics department for the basketball, the basketball side of, And, When you're in data analytics and basketball, essentially, you're trying to find the best players that you can bring into your organization, through data. All right. And it's, you know, obviously we use the, the eye tests and scouting, but, we're focused on, the models, the algorithms and, the random forest to, to create the best team possible. And as part of that, we embarked on a multi year study, trying to find true catalysts. the players who, who were like me, the, the no stat all stars, the players that maybe slipped through the crack, maybe failed the eyeball tests, but bring amazing, amazing value to their teams and their organizations. And so to understand that first, we had to identify, okay, well, what do high functioning teams look like? What do low functioning teams look like? And, through our research, and it was purely a, a qualitative and a quantitative project, we came up with a framework, that we call the coherence quadrant. And what we found was that the two most important factors that will determine the trajectory of your team. And this is industry agnostic, all right? Whether you're talking about basketball or manufacturing or human service, whatever it is, is the interplay between trust and what we call mission focus. Or ability to focus on a singular goal. And the interplay of those two factors explain everything about your team. And if you want to think about every team falls on this quadrant, and, there are sort of four areas. And four types of teams that explain how a team looks at trust and mission focus. A team that's marked by low mission focus and low trust is called a disastrous team. Okay. And as the name implies, it's a disaster. Uh, this team is, is not resilient. They fall apart at the first sign of stress. There's finger pointing, there is, excuse making, there's blame making, there's no cohesion whatsoever. And I'm sure we've all seen examples of that throughout history and, maybe even internally in our own, companies. but those are not winning teams. And those teams are not long for this world. Now where it gets super interesting is, when you have a team that may have high trust, but low mission focus, we call that a lagging team. And on paper, that sounds amazing. Like we're a team that we get along, we go to the happy hour together. We have a few cocktail beers and we go to softball together. But the problem is those teams underperform. And this actually was borrowed from industrial research, on the, the manufacturing lines and let's say, you know, company X making widgets and there's a, a particular line that's always underperforming, the slowest line in the entire plant. And when you focus on this, line, you know, Larry the Riveter is a tremendous guy. Larry is the life of the party, always has a joke, has an amazing family. Oh, you know. Just a guy that hits cleanup on softball team. Just an amazing guy. But the problem is, Larry is a subpar ribbiter. And because we don't want Larry to get in trouble, what does everybody else do? They slow their rate down, protect Larry, because we love him so much and we trust him. Well, this phenomenon has befuddled managers for years, trying to identify that weak link. Not out of spite is this line underproductive, but out of love, right? Which is not what you would think. Well, you go to the other side of the equation and you have a team that's marked by high mission focus, but low trust and. That is called a brittle team. And on paper, again, this is amazing. You have a bunch of monsters, people who say, Hey coach, just point me in the direction of the mountain, I'll go take it. The problem is there's no trust. And so these. Very, very talented and skilled players want to do everything individually. Where this is a problem is that there's one constant in all of our lives, all of our businesses, and that is conflict, crisis, stress. Just a matter of when, right? And trust and having high trust within a team actually has stress buffering properties. we've evolved as humans to when we feel stress, we tend to go with the people that you feel safest with, right? But if you're in a group where the trust isn't present, your team will crumble. And that's why we call that a brittle team. So where do we want to live? Alright, we want to live on a team that has high trust, high mission focus. We call that a coherent team. Or a gelled team, And this is a team, these are the highest performing teams. These, these are the teams that win year after year, quarter after quarter. And how do we know we have these teams? So these, these are teams that have a shared cognition. Right? They just know what each other wants. There is a shared resilience. There's a shared enjoyment. There's a shared identity. People on coherent teams look around and say, Who has it better than us? Nobody. And so as a result, there's super low turnover. Because you'd be crazy to leave this team, or this line, or this company. And so, like, that is the goal as managers, as HR managers of finding people who can raise the level of trust and the levels of mission focus to create those gelled teams. Because those are the teams that have lasting power. Those are the teams that win. I don't care what industry you're talking about.

Damon Klotz: And from my experience, you can identify, especially in larger organizations, you can see those teams. you can see the ones where there's the leader who's like clearly a very good storyteller who knows how to be able to go, this is the vision. This is the mission who checks in on how close are we to these things? Is everyone like heading in the same direction? Do we understand why we're going down this path, not that path. And then you understand as a collective, We can all win, and also it's not sort of over reliant on one person's over achievement in order for the system to win. You know, you think about some teams where it's like if, you know, especially in sport, if one person goes out injured, Does that mean the entire system fails or is there a set of structures, and trust where it's like, we actually all understand the role that we play. So, yeah, definitely I've seen that in the corporate setting and I think it's very obvious when you look at, you know, sporting teams as well.

Shane Battier: Exactly. We call that cross training for competence and the most resilient teams, you know, people are used to carrying the flag and flag bearer can't carry flag anymore. Next person up steps in and you keep rolling.

Damon Klotz: You also mentioned within these sort of different quadrants of teams that you've sort of researched and experienced, the ability to sort of bounce back from setback, you know, the people who have resilience, the ones who understand that,you know, a setback is sometimes just an opportunity to try something different as opposed to being the defining characteristic of we failed. And that means we're failures. And obviously you spent time under Coach K at Duke and he had the emphasis on sort of the next play speed and the ability to kind of be ready for the next play. How have you been able to maybe take some of those learnings into your current life as well? Because I think maybe in sport, we can see the next play, the ball goes out, the ball goes back in, you're like, next play. But maybe in a professional setting, sometimes we can feel like we don't always know when the next play is and we can be bogged down a little bit too much in that past failure.

Shane Battier: Yeah. Look, resilience is a learned skill. Okay? No, no one is born with this gene. It is a learned behavior and it could be a very social behavior. When I played at Duke, Coach K's number one lesson was every single year was the importance of moving on to the next play. And, you know, basketball is a great analogy because in basketball and really any sport, there are hundreds of ways to impact a single play, a single possession. All right. I can make a shot and miss a shot and grab a rebound and I could make a turnover. I can make a foul. I can make a three point like, and there are countless ways to positively impact a play and negatively impact my team and the play. Right? And the example he always used was, is a great player who comes down and does an awesome move behind the back, spin move, you know, finishes, gets the foul. And what does that person do? Does that person point to the camera and beat his chest and point to the cheerleaders? No, no, you get your tail back on defense. And can you do that again? Can you move on to the next play? Can you move on to the next play? Do it again. Can you move on to the next play? Do it again. And on the other side of the token, we know that player who has a terrible play, an embarrassing play, trips over his feet, right? Allows his, his person to score. Everyone's laughing on him. He's on all the not top 10 plays. He's on Instagram. Everyone's making fun of him. You know, does that player just lose all confidence to say, Oh, I'm no good. You know, maybe I should give up basketball. No, no, no, no. You can move on to the next play. And you try to avoid that mistake again. You move on to the next play and next play, next play. And it's a muscle. It's a muscle that you can develop in your brain that you move on to the next play, whether you've had success and or failure struggle. And it's not what just happened. It's about what the most important play in the game is, which is the next play, the play that's hand. And so it's amazing. Like we won a ton of games at Duke university and in four years, we won 133 games and lost 15. It was a record. No one, one ever won more games in a four year period. We don't get to that number unless we had the next play mentality. Okay, we beat North Carolina. Okay, who's next? We beat Maryland. Okay, who's next? All right, we lose a tough one to Connecticut. All right, who's next? And, you know, some would argue that like, well, you don't get to enjoy the wins and, you don't get to enjoy the journey as much. I would disagree. There's an amazing freedom that comes to knowing that this one game is not going to define who we are. And there's going to be opportunities, and we know there's going to be troubles, and we know there's going to be setbacks, but we know we're going to have successes, and you enjoy each challenge for what it is, and it's a very liberating feeling to have that mindset.

Damon Klotz: And I think it's also helps people to not sit in the failure too long, but also not sit in the success too long, which is, you know, you're like, don't let your highs be too high and don't let your lows be too low. And I think. when researching for this episode, I think one of the funniest stories I, I heard, and I forget where I heard it, but I think you were talking about Mutombo every time he would get a block and bring it back in and do the whole finger thing where you're like, I understand the celebration, but in terms of like next play mentality, get the ball back up the court faster so we can actually get a break and like celebrate after you've passed the ball, like, don't sit there like, yes, we've Good job. Like you've done been successful, but like, can the finger wag wait like three seconds

Shane Battier: Yeah, go, go, let's score, let's go, let's score, let's score. And so, the analogy is the people, the teams that can move on to the next play faster than the competition, whether they had success or failure, those are the teams that are the most resilient. Those are the teams that have serial success again and again, and again, and again, and it's just what you do. It's a habit, a muscle you build, and it's just what we do. Okay. We have a record quarter. Okay. What's next? We have a tough quarter, okay, what's next? And, it's amazing to rally cry. and it makes sense across all walks of life.

Damon Klotz: We go, deep on the data, which I know, you know, you'll, have been geeking out with Coltrane recently on all the different data that we have access to, and it's obviously been very written about. In terms of your approach. And I will mention obviously that famous article that I'm sure is always mentioned whenever your name is brought up. But before we go there, I did want to talk about this concept. Like, you know, leadership is spoken about all the time. but you have been talking about this concept called teammanship and I heard you talk about it with Simon Sinek and Simon has been on this show before talking about, you know, infinite mindsets and our approach to understand why and play longer games. Teammanship probably isn't as familiar with people. And I know when you spoke to him, you're like, he doesn't even roll off the tongue very nicely. Maybe that's why it doesn't get used all the time because it just doesn't have that sort of marketing sexiness that leadership does. So what is teammanship to you and why should more people know about it?

Shane Battier: Well, I call it teammateship and we are like a leadership obsessed society. And that's not me saying it. So like Google keeps track of the zeitgeist and knows exactly what is on top of mind. And they assign a thing called a Google score to everything that's been researched since it started back in 2000, I think three. And it's on a scale to a hundred and the term leadership, right. Has never had a score that's been lower than like 80 on a scale to a hundred. Okay. People are constantly asking themselves, do we have leadership? What does leadership look like? Do we need new leadership? You know, how great's our leadership? You know, people are just fascinated about the topic of leadership. If you try to find a Google score for the word. Teammate that has a less than a one Google score, less than one, right? No one's asking anybody about, Hey, what does it take to be a great teammate? And like, do we have great teammates? Am I a great teammate? Do I, am I a bad teammate? How can I improve as a teammate? Right. And so as we talk about culture, like the basic building block of cultural DNA is how we relate to each other and how we are teammates to each other. And so that's for me, a teammate ship is the ability to understand what it takes to be an amazing teammate to raise up not only your level, but the level of your teammates around you and your coworkers and your colleagues. And, it'd be really be an amazing world if we spent more time thinking about how can we all be better teammates?

Damon Klotz: Which I think goes into this article that really, you know, Michael Lewis, who many people would know, you know, the author of Moneyball, a very famous writer, wrote a New York Times Magazine article where you were dubbed the, you know, no stats all star. And there's a quote from that article which said, Batier's game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he's on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse, often a lot worse, which on, if you weren't having that next play mentality, you would only read the first line and be like, Oh, but when you look at the ability to go, but there's something bigger here. And, he followed you around, I believe for a year to understand what made you a glue guy, which is. You know, my favorite type of journalism, when someone really goes deep and like, you know, looks at that. So people should definitely read the article. It is incredible. And it's a really fascinating look at sort of NBA in that moment when things really did start to change and the use of data was becoming more prevalent. I thought maybe to intro this section, could you tell me about the first piece of data that you kind of got in your NBA career that really changed your approach of how you played?

Shane Battier: Well, you have to understand, kind of in the, in the stone age when I played kind of in the pre analytics days, the role of scouting. And so every NBA franchise has a number of scouts and they're great. They live a very, very difficult life. Their job entails going to Milwaukee on a Tuesday night and watching, you know, the Portland Trailblazers and writing down all the tendencies of the team on the Portland Trailblazers because we play them next week. And then they write a report that says, you know, player X, you know, he's got a really good jump shot. Player Y is a strong rebounder. Player Z is is a strong shot blocker. Okay. And so this, this goes on across the league and that was just the norm. And so the scouting reports really broke down what, but they didn't tell me how well. Okay. So it became very subject, but like no one knew any better. All right. Cause it was all the eyeball tests. And so I, well, that guy goes to his right hand. Well like, how do you know? Well, cause he drove to his right hand a couple of times in the game. Right. And so we were subject to very, very small sample sizes, basically what the scout saw in person or, or on tape. All right. But the sample size is very, very small to deduct sweeping, descriptions of, players. Now, in the data age, when I get to the Houston Rockets, they had every possession that player took in a three year period. So all of a sudden. Instead of saying, you know, Kobe Bryant's got a, you know, a really strong right hand, capable jump shooter. The Houston Rockets were telling me through their data said, look, when you send Kobe Bryant to his right hand, which he goes to at a 60 percent clip and he gets into the painted area, which is like four to five feet from the basket. Not only when you factor in makes and misses, which are the traditional way of measuring a player, field goal percentage, but when you factor in his turnovers, his passes to teammates, their makes and misses off those passes, the three throws drawn, the foul shots off those fouls, All the outcomes that could come from going to a right hand drive and getting into the painted area, it was a 63 percent shot. But when he went to his left hand, which he went only 40 percent of the time, and you kept him out of the painted area when you factor in makes, misses, turnovers, three throws, passes, all the outcomes, it was only a 42%. Okay. So you don't have to be like a math major from MIT to understand if I'm guarding the best player in the world, Kobe Bryant at the time, I want him to do the 42 percent thing and not the 62 percent thing. And do I want him to do the 42 percent thing half of the time, three quarters of the time? No, I want him to do the 42 percent thing, his worst thing, every single time that I can force him to do that thing. Right. And so this was like super groundbreaking to me. And instead of just knowing the what, I knew how well. And once I knew how well, now I can start to exploit the edges in the data. And, by playing the long game, by playing the sample size game, I would wear guys that I played against down defensively and just try to just. Make them go to their weakness ad nauseum, ad nauseum. And in a lot of ways I became super detached from the outcome, which is probably the hardest thing we're dealing with data, because we're all judged on like the results. And so if I went out and I. Sent Kobe Bryant to his, his left hand and he scored 40 points on me. You know, the media would be crushing me after the game. Instagram would be crushing me, fan. Oh, Kobe Bryant torched you. But I would say, no, look like that was the right play. The result didn't work out and I'm okay with that. And so I became uber obsessed with the process and the environmental factors and detached from the result. And that is the power of data and over a long, a big sample size over the course of a game, a season, a career, no one can outrun the data. No one, no one. and the numbers played out like that. So, you know, Michael Lewis explaining how I understood this and played the long game. And so a guy who was unathletic and slow, relatively speaking, the other NBA players was able to have amazing success by playing the long data game.

Damon Klotz: And because you had done so much of that research and you really understood it more than, you know, from what I've read, more than any other player, like you were getting, you know, specific sets of data sort of being given to you and be like, hey, Shane, here's your dossier for this game and reading it allowed you to be still in moments of chaos, probably to be like, look, there's a lot happening in this game. There's a lot of different things, but I know you. What might happen here. Like I've seen this play before. So if I just stick to this and play that, which is, I think what we've seen over the last few years with companies is the amount of quick pivots and quick turns and create a brand new product or try something different because the market's in flux, versus what are your principles? What are you good at? What do you know to be true? What is the path that you want to go on? And it's not saying that you shouldn't try new things and be innovative, but it's understanding your fundamentals and like, what does the data really show? Okay.

Shane Battier: Correct. I had a great coach, Jeff Van Gundy, who told us don't fail the plan, let the plan fail you you know, when you give yourself to a plan and now the plan has to be sound and leadership has to do their job, but when you give yourself to a plan and go after it with amazing enthusiasm and discipline and you can accept the results, all right, it's when you're half in. All right. And you give half effort and cause you're maybe scared of the, I don't really trust the plan. Then you're just, it's random and you're, you're leaving it up to chance, whether you're going to succeed or not, you know, but at least if you, if you go all in and give your full effort on a plan, like I did with the data, like I know how much was randomness and how much was skill and I could sleep well at night with, with that mindset.

Damon Klotz: I think there's obviously a lot of, you know, when you really click into some of these things, like you can watch sport at a high level and go, that team won. You can watch sport because you like a certain player. You're like, what did that player do? Like, my love of basketball changed a lot when I started playing in the Culture Amp Fantasy NBA League, because then I was like, oh, I need to understand these things. But even within that, a box score doesn't always tell the whole story. So who is a good fantasy player doesn't necessarily make them a good player, which is what obviously we've seen throughout your career, which is the impact that you had on teams. And I was thinking about this in the context of this conversation, but also the work I do trying to help companies better understand the role of culture and the role of great leadership. And there's a lot of intangibles that are really hard to measure. Like, you know, someone's ability to tell great stories as a leader, the role that they play to make others around them great and the cultural impact. A lot of those things don't make performance reviews. And then you think about performance reviews, maybe in the same way you think about maybe supporting incentive structures. Like in football, there's players who have a Ballon d'Or clause, which means if this person wins the Ballon d'Or, they get a huge amount more money. So of course they want to do everything they can to be the best footballer that year. And there's probably clauses and things like that and points clauses. So what is your take on performance based incentives? Do you think they're useful for great teams?

Shane Battier: There is a use for them, right? there is something to having a baseline, measurable, rigorous goal, as a floor, all right. It's not everything. It is not everything. and the research that we've done, the best leaders have the freedom to vary their rewards.in terms of volume, in terms of who gets recognized, and how they get recognized, and when they get recognized. So if you fall into the same, hey, bonus deadline's coming up, let's just grind hard and reach our number, you're not getting the most out of your people out of your team, right? But if you are in an environment where the leader has the freedom to vary the reward structure, it creates amazing novelty in your, in your workforce. And you don't know when the bonus is coming. You don't know how big it is. And it doesn't have to be, you know, ginormous dollar bonus. It could be, Hey, we're taking your team out to dinner. We're taking them to the Cubs game. You know, we're varying the rewards. When you create that novelty, you actually increase mission focus. And that's one of the traits that we talk about in high, highly successful teams, because people will be more open to that reward. Right. And so I love having discretionary bonuses, alongside sort of the rigorous bonus structure, because it does, the research has showed it is, it increases mission focus and it just feels good. It just feels good and gives you the opportunity to award folks who, you know, may not have that hammer to get across that rigorous, uh, bonus line.

Damon Klotz: Even like little things like asking questions around, you know, like what does it feel like to work on a project with this person on this team? You know, do you think this person increases your value or decreases your value when you get a chance to work with XYZ person, you know, what are the strengths that they bring that allows you to be better? And it kind of separates individuals from just an individual goal to go as a collective. How do we, and you know, this is where like modern organizational design kind of comes in with people trying to work out how do we get the right group of people on the right team at, on the right project at the right time, based on the skills and mindsets that we sort of need. And I think there's a data aspect to that, but then there's also just the types of leaders and people we want to work with. And I wanted to maybe pivot into this conversation about mindset.

Shane Battier: Well, Damon, there's one thing I always tell people who don't work with CultureRamp, who aren't maybe sophisticated in the data, I said, the easiest way to figure out who your catalysts are in your group, all right? You send out a simple poll. you open up a spreadsheet and CultureAmp does this and can dissect this data in a much, much better way. You say, hey, tell me three people that energize you. When you interact with person X, Y, and Z, you are left feeling more energized. And then when you use networking software, you know who the people are that are the energy, energy givers or your organization. And those are your catalysts, this has nothing to do with the role, has nothing to do with title, has nothing to do with responsibility. It could be the barista in the lobby of your coffee shop. It could be the CFO. It could be the CEO. It could be head of HR. and so. You know, I know CultureRamp does an amazing job of creating data sets in novel places, right? And so the more we can do that to understand just the little things to identify the people who move culture, and then you could also do the same thing on the other end, say, okay, who are three people that, who are energy vampires that you feel depleted after, dealing with, right? And that's also a very, very, very important data set to have to know, okay, the talent may not be. Commiserate to the drag, on the organization. And so, you know, I commend Culture Amp for doing things like this. I'm way more sophisticated than what I'm suggesting, but it's a nice way to try to get novel data sources, on your people and, trying to up level, internally the culture.

Damon Klotz: So what I'm hearing is maybe we need to have the Shane Battier, uh, catalyst survey as a template. so

Shane Battier: I like that.

Damon Klotz: start running this.

Shane Battier: It's easy. I, everyone understand, understands it.

Damon Klotz: Well, if Culture Amp customers are listening and you want to run that survey, reach out to us, we'll set it up and maybe we'll come back in 12 months time and we'll a look at what the data is showing us.

Shane Battier: I love it.

Damon Klotz: On the subject of, like I said at the start, obviously there's a few, game changer players that people sort of talk about within the NBA. Kobe, obviously there's a lot of famous stories about you and Kobe. LeBron, who was your teammate. And then, like I mentioned, you know, I had a chance to really watch Steph Curry up close my first ever NBA game that I went to, the first Warriors game I went to, Steph Curry broke the NBA record for three pointers in a game. And I'm like, does this happen every week? And people are like, kind of, but not really. which was wild. And one of the best things I ever did when I lived in the U. S. was I paid the money to go to the NBA finals to go see LeBron's Cavs versus the kind of Dream Team Warriors. And it was just one of those pinch me moments where I was like, this is, you're never going to get a chance to sort of see this. And.

Shane Battier: awesome.

Damon Klotz: Yeah, and just seeing that sort of that greatness and those teams come together, like, yes, there's the data that you need in order to try to be on a team that that's great and try to defend against a team that great, but also at an individual level, there is the mindset that you take in. To who do you want to be on, court? And I heard you talk about the mind games you played with Kobe and this whole false humility play that you would kind of do where you would say, I can't, I can't guard him. He's too good. Don't stand a chance. So can you tell me about just the role that mindset played in your career outside of knowing the data?

Shane Battier: Well, I was confident in one thing that I could control everything that had to do with me and nothing could affect that. So what I, what I mean by that is I can control. I could control how enthusiastic I was. I could control my self talk. I could control how good of a shape I was in. I could control, you know, how early I got to practice, how late I stayed after practice, right? I didn't mess up the simple things. Okay. Like don't mess up simple. All right, being on time, being enthusiastic, knowing your job, right? Asking questions, like not rocket science. It has nothing to do with like my talent or being 6'8 or anything. Like I, I mastered the simple. I didn't mess up the simple. And again, that gives you amazing, amazing freedom to know that like, look, I've done everything in my power. To be prepared to execute. Now, whether to execute or not, you know, there are a lot of factors that go into that, but you're liberated by knowing you prepared the best way you can. You're ready, you're prepped for this moment to show what you can do. And now let's just go out and doing it. and so, I earned my money being an all NBA defender, so I had to defend the best players in the world every single night. And so, like, these guys were more athletic than I was. They had, you know, much more respect from the referees than I had. so there were a lot of reasons why they should have kicked my butt. but I knew that no one could out prepare me. I could know their weaknesses better than they knew their weaknesses. No one's gonna out work me. I was never gonna quit. So the mindset of like, I'm just going to control everything I can control every single day, every single time. That's who I became. And it's amazing that when you do that, you develop the reliability gene. My teammates, my coaches, they never, ever, ever, ever had to worry, is Bat ready to play tonight? Because I always was. Right? Is Battier in shape? I was always in shape. Does Battier know all the plays? Yeah, Battier knows all the plays. And so people always want show how valuable they are to a team. just start by controlling everything that you can control to the 99, a hundred percentile that you can. That breeds reliability. People want you on their team because they know what they're getting from you and there's no surprises. Right now it's up to execute. But like that, I laugh at how many people just focus on everything else, but the things that they can control. And then they wonder why it doesn't work out. it doesn't work out that way in life and basketball, but it's certainly not life.

Damon Klotz: Yeah, at the end, end of the day, the world will always be spinning and changing and, the environment that we thought we, we joined at one company, you know, day one is only day one for that first day and then everything after that is going to be changing based on, you know, what's happening in the market, what's happening with the company, what's happening with the team that you work on, but the end of the day, it's like you wake up and you have control over who you want to be, how you want to show up, what your values are. And knowing it and yeah, like I think probably, you know, the world looks to sport because it's, it's interesting. And like I said, there's a Hollywood aspect to modern sport these days, but at its core, if we remember going back to just playing on teams in like, you know, as children, like you said, it's just. Who am I? How do I contribute? How do I feel when I contribute? And that sense of self that we can kind of get from it as well, which I think is sometimes overlooked when we think about modern sports stories.

Shane Battier: you need faith that there needs to be a certain amount of faith. The feedback that I get when I tell people this, they're like, yeah, but I'm just so worried that I'm going to fall through the cracks. and I'm so worried that like, my efforts are going to go unnoticed and I'm just wasting my energy. And,I say, you, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in, in some sort of karmic, force out there that if you continually do the right thing. Things, and you help your team win, you'll be recognized, you'll be compensated, But your team has to win, So fight like heck to do whatever it can to make your teammates better, To make your division better, to make your manager better. To make your boss's bosses look better. Right. And there's something a hundred percent karmic about it. That if it's pure of heart and you do do it, not because you want to get ahead and get a promotion, but because you care about the mission, all right, you trust the people around you, you will. Be compensated for it, and so there's that faith element that you just, you just have to buy into.

Damon Klotz: I'm sure there's probably leaders who are listening to this and going, I want to better recognize, you know, the glue person, the person who is really bringing a team together, but they might not necessarily know how to identify who those people are. or they're listening to this and going, I'm sure, because there might be another version of your story where the Houston Rockets doesn't look at that data, the backroom stuff doesn't go down that path and, you know, I'm not sure if you think about this this way, but, you know, if that whole data side of basketball didn't happen at that time, you know, maybe your career plays out a different way. And there could be someone listening who's like, I feel like I play that role and either I want the team to recognize that or a leader's like, how do I recognize these people? So do you have, as maybe one of our closing questions, advice for leaders who can better identify and support someone like a Shane Battier who's on that team and needs a leader to sort of help recognize that?

Shane Battier: Well, first of all, you talk about it. as managers and leaders, like, yeah, we all want glue guys. We all want catalysts. those folks are like, the most energizing and, the springboard production and value for the company. But yeah, talk about it. Like this has to be like a value. Like you know, we appreciate this. We appreciate people who exhibit doggedness. We appreciate people that show a disciplined pursuit of their craft. All right. We appreciate people who show, an avoidance of the limelight. And so, like, by actually talking about the traits of what makes a catalyst, a glue guy, and actually launching a podcast called Glue Guys, September 10th, you can find it on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. We extol the virtues of people who may sit silently, but like, in organizations where leaders talk about this behavior and they model this behavior. for listening. And they recognize this behavior just by talking to folks and being voracious about like, this is important, you'd be shocked at how those people rise up and how people will model that behavior even more. But you have to talk about it. You can't just assume that, people want to exhibit this behavior, right? so, Again, it goes back to leadership. That's exhausting. It's exhausting. And leaders have so much on their plate. I have amazing empathy for leaders, but great leaders take the time to unearth the catalyst, the glue people, and they bang the culture drum every single day. This is why we're here. This is why we're here. This is why we're here. And this is what's important. This is what is important. This is what is important. And so, my advice is if you want this truly to be effective, All right, have an extra espresso and go after it and extol this and say, you know, this, this is how we will be even more productive and even a more resilient, better company.

Damon Klotz: That's why I'm like, when I hear that, one of the things that I always encourage leaders to really think about is the use of language and sort of like, think about things like marketing and branding of how you want to be running teams inside your organization. You know, Coach K's got things he's famous for, he's got words that he used, you know, whether it is, you know, being the glue person or being a culture, addition, as opposed to a culture, you know, subtractor, create language, shared language that people understand and go, we recognize, This thing, this person, this type of person, this type of characteristic, this value, like name it. So people know that it's there. Talk about it, measure it, understand it. And then people are like, Oh yeah, like I understand that now. Like if there's no, shared sense of like what we're trying to achieve, which goes back to, you know, those great team dynamics that you were talking about, but yeah, like put campaigns around it, use language, create logos, create things around it. So you know what it feels like for that, that to be true. So you can like flash that little emoji up that light up, use that word and go, this is what great looks like. This is what we want to be part of so that people know it when they see it.

Shane Battier: 100%. And it's hard. It's really hard. It takes a lot of energy. And most leaders, I wouldn't say most, but a lot of leaders just won't be willing to invest that as an investment. It's an investment in your people. Cause look, I don't care if we're playing basketball. I don't care if we're Culture Amp. I don't care if you are any company in the world that you work for. You want a larger mission than just. Turn in a paycheck, right? You want it. You will. Every person has the need to say, you know what, I matter. My work matters in our work matters, right? And so the most effective leaders that I've been around, again, spell that out. They celebrate that. And there's not anyone who walks through those doors on any given day that doesn't know why they're there. You know, not just for financial, reporting purposes, like just, like there's got to be something more and, you know, culture is, the glue of that something else.

Damon Klotz: This has been an incredible conversation. I've like learned so much from the research aspect, as well as just having a chance to, yeah, really geek out on a sport that I love, but also I think has a lot of analogies for work. You started your career where there was not a, you know, huge amount of data being used. You were then sort of, you know, very famously through that article, That recognition from Michael Lewis in that research about the impact that someone like you can have on a team and why teams get better because of you. Obviously the world of data has changed dramatically. My final question is what excites you about data moving forward about how we can create better teams, better sporting organizations, and better cultures?

Shane Battier: Well, I think with AI, look, we are all in search of novel data sources. That's the name of the game. Whoever, whoever has,, the newest and the rarest data sources across all industries, you're going to win. You're going to win. Cause you'll be able to, assess quicker and pivot quicker and react quicker. but it's a race to see who can get that novel data source. First, and you know, the goalposts always moves. Once one novel data source is identified, everyone rushes to copy, just like in basketball. And so it's, it's, constant struggle for new data and new data sets and finding different ways to think about how we're looking at this. I think AI is going to really impact the way we gather data, analyze data and act on data. We're not at singularity yet, so there's still a lot of work to do.

Damon Klotz: I love it. I've certainly seen it. Once one sporting organization starts using CultureAmp, it's not very long until every single one starts using it because everyone's like, Hey, do they have a competitive advantage? What are they measuring? So, look for the unique data, analyze it, tell stories with it. And at the end of the day, remember that we're humans, so we're just trying to do the best that we can. And, uh, I just want to thank you for your storytelling, I learned so much just through the research process of really understanding how you thought about yourself, your role, the whole idea of teammateship and just using data. And like, there's nothing wrong with being a nerd on these things. That's how we learn.

Damon Klotz: So I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining me on the Culture First podcast today, Shane.

Shane Battier: Damon, thanks so much for having me. Really enjoyed the conversation.