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By Tom Friend

Every Final Four team last weekend received scouting reports from a data company who is telling them… how to beat up on each other.

Synergy, the human and AI-powered basketball analytics lab that was acquired by Sportradar two years ago, has evolved into such a coaching resource that every D1 men’s and women’s program subscribes to their scouting service just for the sheer nuance and volume of it all.

A breakdown of every possession from every college team all season? That’s available. What plays the team ran on each possession? Available. Who passed the ball to whom and then to whom and then to whom? Available. Who shot the ball and from where? Available. Don’t believe them? They’ll gladly verify it on their proprietary video. Synergy has 1,000 human data collectors… to go with an automated camera tracking system in 250 D1 arenas… to go with their own shot quality algorithms themselves.

They literally monitor 75,000 basketball games a year — from high school to DI to DII to DIII to the G-League to the EuroLeague to the NBA — and estimates it has 50 million tracked shots in its database since its inception in 2004. But when it came specifically to this year’s March Madness, Synergy has logged every game in real-time and then distributed a data-video report 15 minutes after every final buzzer.

Considering teams sometimes have just 30 hours to prepare for an NCAA Tournament opponent, Synergy will also conveniently diagram every opponent’s play calls and supply APIs for more expert level coaching staffs that have their own analytic departments for additional game-planning.

“I don’t have [any stories] for this year’s March Madness, but, [in 2012], we had a 15-seed, Norfolk State, beat a 2-seed, Missouri,” says Mark Silver, EVP, Sports Performance, Sportradar. “And immediately after that game, the [Norfolk State] coach called and thanked us for everything we did and said, ‘The only reason we won was the fact that we had the Synergy scouting report.’”

One of the company’s first coaching clients in 2006, in fact, was a then-relatively unknown Jim Larranaga of George Mason University — who leveraged the platform all the way to a shocking Final Four run that season. Now, Larranaga’s back in the Final Four with Miami and again with Synergy.

The product helps coaches on multiple levels, the first being game prep. Synergy will provide an opponents’ innate tendencies such as which direction a post player tends to spin to the basket — off of his right shoulder or left. Or if a player turns to the baseline from the right block 100% of the time or dribbles first 95% of the time.

Photo courtesy of Synergy

The info is so nuanced, Synergy can tell a coach if an opposing player, or his own player, is superior driving right or left or better shooting off the dribble or off- a-screen or better pulling up or finishing at the rim. There are stats and videotape to support it all. “Advanced scouting,” Silver says.

Another new activation is quantifying the role of every player in this year’s NCAA tournament. Through machine learning, Synergy’s software can determine the positional characteristics of any player, leaning on a database that contains every college player’s shot since 2014. For example, Synergy classified Miami’s 6-foot-7 Norchad Omier as a “Rim-Finishing Big”, Gonzaga’s 6-10 Drew Timme as a “Post-Up Big” and Alabama’s 6-9 Brandon Miller is a “Playmaking Wing.”

By using artificial intelligence to categorize every player, Synergy has perhaps become the technological centerpiece of the transfer portal. Coaches can search the company’s database for “Slashing Wings” or “Spot Up Shooting Wings” or “Scoring Ball Handlers” or “Stretch Bigs,” and the names come spitting out.

Photo courtesy of Synergy

“We undoubtedly play a huge role in the transformation of the transfer portal because you can go into our system,” Silver says. “And if you’re looking for a type of player or a player in a certain class, whether they’re playing in JUCO or D1 or D2 or D3 — or if you already know about the player — you can easily go and find every game that player has played. Since high school, most likely.

“Or if you just need to fill a spot, you can actually look and query the system to try to find a player that’s most fitting what you’re looking for. So recruiting, scouting, transfers: that’s one of the big ones for us.”

The Synergy Automated Camera system is another high-tech advantage, considering its camera vision tracks shot quality and team/player tendencies while also providing coach’s film and video confirmation. Hawk-Eye’s cameras handle that for the NBA. But when it comes to the college level, Synergy is more or less holding down the tracking landscape.

With all of these NCAA coaches bought in, the company has to try to stay neutral — which may be a little tricky at this weekend’s Final Four.

Especially when Larranaga starts winking at them.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

The Zone’s platform is an innovative and proactive approach to student-athlete wellbeing. (Main image: The Zone)

A Data & Innovation brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Nearly three years removed from the worst of the pandemic, that period of isolation continues to reverberate acutely among college athletes. Their seasons were shut down, but they lost out on more than just games They missed time training, sure, but also lost out on time being a teammate and being in that environment.

Those social repercussions persist, as do new pressures related to name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities — and all the other stressors that come with being a college student and competing in a sport at a high level.

The Zone, a mental wellness app catered toward the specific demands of college athletes, has gained traction and today announced its largest deal yet, a multi-year, conference-wide deal with the Big East. The app will roll out slowly to start, with 100 student-athletes at Georgetown and Marquette onboarding this spring, before a similar number of app licenses will become available to all other Big East schools thereafter.

“Our student-athletes have reported some of the most significant challenges center around the pressures of being a Division I student-athlete and the need to make your life seem perfect on social media,” Big East Senior Associate Commissioner Katie Willett wrote in an email. “Additionally, student-athletes have struggled with the reintegration following Covid and successfully managing academics, athletics and community service.”

The Zone encourages users to complete regular check-ins in the app, answering questions about mood and academic and athletic updates in a gamified way. Through machine learning, the app offers advice, connections to on-campus resources, suggested activities like meditation and even the ability to book appointments with a counselor or therapist.

The Zone makes reaching out for mental health support easier for student athletes through the platform’s accessible and streamlined process (Image: The Zone)

“Performance anxiety is the biggest trigger we’ve seen over the last two years,” said The Zone Co-Founder/CEO Ivan Tchatchouwo, a former Division II basketball player whose own experiences with mental health challenges informed the founding of the app. “And it shows up in different ways. It’s not just performing on the court, right? It’s performing through the anxiety of being a first-generation college person on campus. Your parents pressure on you, or fans, friends and family. NIL pressure is causing performance anxiety because now it’s like, ‘I want to get paid just like a teammate.’

“Time management is another huge one that’s causing a lot of stress and anxiety for young people. And then also, lack of community. They’re in teams, but those two years have taken them away from knowing how to communicate correctly.”

Lehigh, Seton Hall University and St Francis-Brooklyn are all early adopters of The Zone; Memphis and Stony Brook previously used it as well. Former America East Commissioner Amy Huchthausen became such a strong supporter that she joined the company’s board of advisors. The Zone first connected with Big East leadership when hosting its fourth annual Student-Athlete Well-Being Forum at the University of Connecticut in June 2022.

Tchatchouwo says about 4,000 student-athletes are enrolled in the app, of which 2,800 remain active. Monthly participation is almost 25% whereas recent peer-reviewed research estimated that industry average for digital mental health apps is 3%.

“We spent the whole last year testing what works, what’s sticky, what doesn’t work. We’ve added a whole new content strategy,” Tchatchouwo said.

“That experience has to consistently be fresh for them, to want to go through it,” he added. “It also gets daunting to just see all the time, the same kind of inundating stuff. We’re getting creative on how we push that up. Machine learning is a big thing that we’re jumping bigger into and really understanding what it is that your data is saying. What is your storyline? What are your trends? And how do you the trends play out the life? And then what are the next steps for you?”

Tchatchouwo is quick to emphasize that The Zone is not a replacement to existing mental health services or professionals but rather a complement to or conduit for those options.

“The Zone is a state-of-the-art mental wellness platform that integrates perfectly into our institutions’ wellness programs,” Willett wrote. “It will make our services more effective by enabling a culture that prioritizes mental wellness, an important topic this day and age for our student-athletes. Our goals are to provide our student-athletes with a safe space and easily accessible resources to complement the amazing services being provided by our institutions when it comes to mental wellness.”

Other universities might try to buttress students by hiring additional psychologists to counsel student-athletes, but Tchatchouwo said that approach can suffer from inefficiency. Often the ratio of students-to-psychologists remains overwhelmingly high. Even then, the students need help discovering and accessing those resources. It’s important to have layers of defense, and The Zone seeks to drive awareness through content and to make specific referrals within the app to help maximize the use of what’s already available.

“You still need to educate the people that are on the forefront of what it looks like for their athletes,” Tchatchouwo said. “So we want to launch that education series for the coaches and the staff and administration, so they’re also educated, which makes the mental health investment even that much better.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By John Portch

What is the best way to define and resolve a performance problem?

It is a topic that comes up with regularity at the Leaders Performance Institute and, here, we present the approach of British bobsledder Montell Douglas; Swimming Australia’s Head Coach Rohan Taylor, Wales women’s rugby union team Head Coach Ioan Cunningham; Jayne Ellis, currently a performance advisor with UK Sport; and actor Dom Simpson, who delivers a view from the world of the performing arts.

We distil their responses into five essential considerations.

1. How do your athletes approach goal-setting?

“I address my performance gaps through real, basic goal-setting. In the sense that there’s always a process,” says Montell Douglas, who competed for Great Britain in the two-person bobsleigh at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Previously, she competed for her nation in the 100m and 4x100m relay at the 2008 Summer Olympics, also in Beijing. In completing the switch she made British history. It was something she was aware of in the build-up to the Games and here she gives the Leaders Performance Institute an insight into the continuous conversation she had with herself.

“What does British history mean?” she continues. “I reverse-engineered the goal, looked back and said ‘this means I have to do X’. ‘But where am I now? Well, I’m right here and that means I have to do this’.

“One of the things was ‘what does my sport need? What do you require? Am I reflective of a history-making athlete?’ If not, then I’m making those little adjustments; ‘I need to gain four kilos by this date’, for example.”

Douglas interrogated herself constantly. “It enabled me to make clear targets and goals, with deadlines for all that was needed, because you have to be ready on 20 February 2022 [in the case of the Olympic bobsleigh]. You can’t be ready on 21 February 2022 – it’s too late.”

2. Engage your athletes in two-way conversations

The coaches have a role to play too. “It’s having a two-way conversation,” says Ioan Cunningham. “Footage is huge and we have individual development plans for players. So if our number nine [scrum half] needs to work on her pass off the base so that it’s quicker  and she needs to get the ball off the deck, that’ll be a performance plan for her.

“How does she get better? Link it to footage and then have constant catch-ups every week or two where you go ‘look, this is better – you can see it’s better. The ball is in the ten’s hands [fly half] much quicker’.

“The ten could then give her feedback as well and say ‘yes, the passing is much better, it’s faster and more accurate’; and then breaking that down to the drills she needs to do to make sure that it gets her passing better.”

Actor Dom Simpson, who stars as Elder Price in the West End production of The Book of Mormon in London, also prefers a two-way discussion in his work. “My agent always describes it as a ‘dance’,” he tells the Leaders Performance Institute. “I can do one thing for a dance but the partners have to be working together to make that work.

“An issue, for example, could be my director coming to me and saying ‘this scene is not quite reading right. Maybe we can try this?’ and a lot of the time that works best when it’s a collaborative discussion – I don’t think anyone works best when it’s ‘do this and it’ll be better’ because unless I have an understanding of why that is it won’t feel like the best way to do it.”

3. Enable guided discovery to mutually desired outcomes

Simpson also explains that the best directors facilitate the actor’s path to the best agreed outcome. He says: “The best creatives that I’ve ever worked with, they allow that conversation to happen and they facilitate you finding the answer. They ask questions that make you find the answer that they just want to tell you anyway so that there’s a feeling of ‘we both got to it’, whereas the director might be saying ‘I knew that’s where we wanted to get to but I had to allow you to find that for it to feel real’. When we talk about the ‘truth’ in a scene, a lot of the time that’s how we get to the bottom of an issue.”

4. Where does your multidisciplinary team fit in?

Cunningham tells the Leaders Performance Institute of a hypothetical scenario involving an athlete. “A player may need more power in her lower legs, so that becomes a three-way conversation with the S&C coach,” he says. “[The player will say] ‘OK, if I do this, it’ll make me a better rugby player, it’ll make me more powerful, and it’ll get me picked’.”

The multidisciplinary approach was taken by Jayne Ellis and British Wheelchair Basketball during her time serving as the organisation’s Performance Director. Much like at Wales Rugby, performance questions were generally raised in an athlete’s individual development plan between the athlete themselves and the coach. “They determine what the objectives are and the rest of the staff will work around and towards those objectives,” she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2021.

Progress was tracked at fortnightly meetings for both the men’s and women’s teams. “That’s when we look at how everybody’s work programme is feeding into that athlete achieving that objective,” she continued. “Then there are different bits and pieces that we do with each practitioner in order to assess where they are with things and where they want to go. That all gets captured so that the player can see their development. Sometimes when you’re an athlete and you’re in the grind, you’re like ‘this is so difficult, I don’t feel like I’m progressing’ but then you’ve got this whole piece here, which helps you see that you are progressing and that’s why it’s important.”

5. Call upon your network and collective knowledge

At Swimming Australia, coaches and practitioners attend monthly meetings specific to their event or discipline in order to ensure everyone is on track. Head Coach Rohan Taylor will drop into those meetings and is always on hand to discuss performance issues with athletes and their coaches as he travels to the state hubs located across Australia.

“I’ll ask questions; [for example] ‘So you’re having trouble here? Have you spoken to somebody else?’ because I get to see everybody around the country. I might see a solution in Western Australia, in Perth, and I can say ‘have you connected with this person?’ I’m kind of guiding and advising them where to go.

“If I think they’re at a road block, I’d hope that they’ve already done that. That’s the system that’s set up. If not, I’d be saying ‘have you done that? Have you done this?’ I saw a good example this morning [concerning] an athlete who is struggling to absorb feedback around the communication on their skill development; the tasks. I just watched and I observed and I just said to the coach and the biomechanist ‘have you guys tried just letting him watch what it looks like when it’s done correctly by someone else and just letting him go and explore rather than giving him too much detail?’ ‘No, actually we haven’t’. ‘So maybe that’s their learning style?’

“It’s just me bringing what I see out there and asking them the questions.”

A Data & Innovation brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

You can’t have a discussion about sports technology today without including athletes in that conversation. Their partnerships, investments and endorsements help fuel the space – they have emerged as major stakeholders in the sports tech ecosystem. The SBJ Tech Athlete’s Voice series highlights the athletes leading the way and the projects and products they’re putting their influence behind.

* * * * *

Aliyah Boston is, without question, the most decorated player in women’s college basketball. In 2022, the South Carolina forward became the first male or female athlete to win the Naismith Trophy as overall player of the year as well as Naismith Defensive Player of the Year. She was named the Honda Cup Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year, joining a list of recent winners that includes Katie Ledecky, Breanna Stewart, Brittney Griner, Maya Moore and Candace Parker — as well as her coach, Dawn Staley, who did in 1991.

Boston, who is 6’5”, has rewritten South Carolina’s record book for just about every permutation of stats related to rebounds, blocks and double-doubles. She averaged 17 points and 17 rebounds in last year’s Final Four, as she led the Gamecocks to the program’s second NCAA national championship. She is the expected No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 WNBA Draft.

A native of St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands and a graduate of the Massachusetts-based prep school, the Worcester Academy, Boston has struck a number of NIL [name, image and likeness] deals with Under Armour, Bose, Bojangles, Crocs, Octagon Basketball, Orangetheory Fitness and, most recently, Six Star Pro Nutrition. When NIL deals became legal on July 1, 2021, Six Star Pro Nutrition announced three at midnight with women’s basketball twins Haley and Hanna Cavinder as well as then-Illinois player Edgar Padilla Jr South Carolina women’s basketball players are also all estimated to be earning about $25,000 per year through the Garnet Trust and NOCAP Sports.

On choosing to align with Six Star Pro Nutrition . . .

First of all, their want to partner with me was just something truly special because I know how big their brand is. But I also love their protein powder and their 4th Quarter Energy supplements. I really think that they do really well when it comes to training and recovery. They’re just a great partner, and I’m just super excited about it.

On when she began to emphasize nutrition and recovery . . .

It’s definitely been a major focus since I got to college because the pace of the game is just so much faster than it was in high school or anything that I’ve ever done. And so definitely in college I really started to focus on that, especially sophomore year going into junior year was definitely my key time to lock in and focus on that.

On college level training . . .

It’s definitely intense, but I feel like, as the time has passed, I’ve been able to adapt really quickly and I think I’ve done that pretty well. It was different because in high school I didn’t really have that focus — the strength coaches or the nutrition pieces that I needed. Now when I got to college, that was a major difference, definitely beneficial.

On sport science devices . . .

Definitely [we use] technology to track a lot of it. We have the Kinexons that we use [for load monitoring]. We have a jumping machine [force plate] that tells how fast or how hard we land and jump and how quick we get up and down.

On tracking sleep . . .

We actually used to do an Oura ring where it would tell us our sleep, but then I got a little nervous before I go to sleep at 1:00 AM and then my strength coach sees that and she’s like, ‘Why are you not in bed?’

On having Dawn Staley as a coach . . .

She understands the game very well, and so her IQ of the game has just helped us because she just directs us. She tells us really how things should go, and then when we really like look at it, she’s right. It makes it a lot easier because she never second guesses, she never questions. She’s always like, you know what? Like, ‘This happens, [then] this.’ She has a solution for every scenario that could possibly happen, which I just think is really cool.

On what she looks for in a brand when making NIL deals . . .

I look at them trying to help grow the game, which I think is definitely a priority. And I think Six Star is doing that well, especially, like they’re offering the trip to go to the national championship game, whether it’s the girls’ or the men’s game, which I think is something truly special because there are probably so many fans out there that might not ever get to get the chance. They can apply on the website, try to get in and they have a great chance to win.

On why growing the game is such a passion for her . . .

There’s a lot of attention on the women’s game specifically right now. I think we have a lot of talent, and I do think there are a lot of younger people looking up to us. If they could come to a game, they would love it, they would probably talk about it a lot more. But also [I want] to help grow the game in the future. When our time is done in college and we get to the league, we want people to continue to watch us — the same fan bases that we played for years and years or even a fan base that we competed against — and to say, ‘They’re no longer in college, let’s see how they do in the league.’

On her message to young girls who might be interested in basketball . . .

I would tell them to set high goals for themselves. Don’t think anything is untouchable because that’s what I did — a little girl from the islands trusted God, set high goals to go to college, play in the league. And so I’d definitely tell them to also do the same thing, no matter what, whether it’s not basketball, but something else. Make sure they set their goals themselves and surround themselves with people that support them all.

On her rebounding . . .

All the coaches I have in South Carolina have definitely helped, but I just track the ball and then I’m just like, ‘I need to go get it.’ Rebounding is a big part of South Carolina basketball, and Coach Staley emphasizes us rebounding defensively and offensively. And so it’s really just the will, the want, to go get the rebound to give yourself your team another possession or to help them push the ball in transition.

On taking pride in playing the post . . .

Everybody wants to now shoot the ball, dribble. Everybody’s a big guard. But playing the position that I play, having my back to the basket, I truly enjoy it because I feel like not a lot of people right now like the contact, like to bang, but I do. And so I think it goes to my advantage. But I also want to be growing my game as an individual, so definitely being able to knock down that jumper, take people off the dribble is definitely a priority, but I also think it’s important to be able to go and bang down there and score through contact or even get a stop defensively.

On how she views brand-building. . .

Social media is definitely a crucial part of it all because that is where you get your fan base, your followers, and partner companies. They look at that, your social media engagement, how you get along with fans.

At first I wasn’t a big social media girl. I had to be convinced time after time after time by my parents to post a simple post on Instagram. Before NIL started, my mom was like, ‘Aaliyah, you need to lie build a following.’ And I was like, ‘OK, sure. I’ll try. I’ll post the beach picture, let me post this.’

But now I really enjoy it. I enjoy posting, I’ll TikTok, I’ll post on Instagram, Twitter. So I definitely think it is an important role, though, because this is how you build your brand, who you are. So companies can see this and be like, ‘Oh, I like this, I like that.’

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

As Lorena Torres Ronda explains, there is a big difference between say the NBA and international tournament play in basketball.

She has experienced both, including a spell as Performance Director at the Philadelphia 76ers and, most recently, as Performance Coordinator at the Spanish Basketball Federation, a role she has held for two years.

Lorena is also a Performance Advisor for the Leaders Performance Institute and, as such, we were delighted to welcome her to deliver an instalment in our Performance Perspectives series, where she reflected on her contribution to Spain’s success at the 2022 men’s FIBA EuroBasket Championships; their fourth triumph.

Hers was a dual role during those three weeks in September that combined S&C work with player load monitoring. It was vital that she prioritise, as she tells the podcast.

“Of course, you see things and my mind is like, ‘we could do this or that’ and ‘it would be good to improve speed or agility’ – that’s my emotional side,” she says. “My rational side knows that in three weeks you’re not going to improve tremendously in certain qualities because physiologically you don’t have time.”

Elsewhere in this episode, she discusses:

• The development of Spain’s feedback system [6:30];
• Harnessing the legacy of the nation’s basketball history [13:00];
• Preparing for the worst during a tournament [20:50];
• How the performance staff connected to the team’s vision [28:00].

Lorena Torres Ronda Twitter | LinkedIn

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

By John Portch

What are the fundamentals of a good practice facility? For the Toronto Blue Jays, who opened their Player Development Complex in Dunedin, Florida, in 2021, those fundamentals were summed up in an acronym that pulls together their values: CLEAR. It stands for collaboration, learning, empowerment, achieve and respect.

Each was explained by Angus Mugford, who served as the Jays’ Vice President of high Performance at the time. “We want to have a highly collaborative environment where different departments and people are close to each other,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2019. “The open spaces are more attractive for people who want to come together. It’s the same thing with the high performance offices and space. It’s together and unified and it’s also physically and metaphorically in the centre, so that the ease of communication and collaboration is right there, but it’s also a space for players and coaches and other staff can be together easily.

“‘Learning.’ You don’t have to be in a specific room to learn but we want to create some specific environments where learning is enhanced. One of the critiques other teams were telling us about were in auditoriums, how easy it was for guys on the back row to close their eyes and switch off like a movie theatre, so we’ve leaned towards more a business school lecture theatre, which is less about lecturing and more about having a pulpit in the middle and more of an inclusive, collaborative environment between whoever is leading the discussion and everybody who is in that audience.

“The E is ‘empowerment’ and that goes for staff and players. That people can take the initiative, that we want players to be at the centre of that ultimately. So creating spaces where people have the autonomy and ability to create discussions; open meeting rooms. When we toured Google, that was a really good takeaway, they have this idea of ‘collision spaces’; so creating spaces where people can organically meet.

“Then the A is for ‘achieve’. Not just winning but really just more about a process of excellence and really trying to be consistent and thoughtful about the details. I think with the details that we’re trying to get into with the design and setting up, we also realised that in this process of moving in we’re going to screw some things up. Or people are going to have even more ideas that we can think about until they’re actually in the space so I think that whole process of moving in, taking feedback, and saying what people need and want to make that space even more functional is going to be a priority once we do actually move into the space too.

“Finally, ‘respect’ is the R. Not just for each other and the team but our environment and our physical space is an element that can be a thread throughout our team.”

Here, we explore six more themes that define a good training environment.

1. Flow and efficiency

Efficiency is essential and that comes from frictionless circulation of athletes and staff. “You have everything on one level when it comes to training, preparation and recovery,” said Martin Buchheit of Paris St-Germain’s Ooredoo Training Center in 2019. Buchheit served as PSG’s Head of Performance between 2014 and 2020. He now serves as a high performance consultant with LOSC Lille in France’s Ligue 1. “Everything is central and everything is connected. From the locker room you enter straight into the mobility, stretching and warmup area, which is chronological as well. You get ready, you get changed, then you go for functional work. Afterwards, their recovery, the stretching and mobility area is connected to the locker room, the hydrotherapy area is connected to the locker room; it makes it very efficient to get those recovery routines straight after training.

Flow is also crucial to an aligned, interdisciplinary approach. “One of the things I’ve found historically is that people gravitate towards their own space,” said Mugford, who now serves as the Senior Vice President of Player Development & Performance at the New Jersey Devils. “The strength coaches may want to sit together and the trainers may want to sit together. People gravitate towards their own discipline and what we really want to make a commitment to doing is sharing that space so that we’re really maximising the collaboration. We’ve already made that shift over the past few years, but something as basic as that is really fundamental when we have affiliate staff and groups sitting together so that natural exchange happens as we’d like it to.”

2. Touchpoints for collaboration and creativity

The Jays’ upgrade made Mugford the ideal man to talk with Phil Cullen, the Senior Director of Basketball Operations & Organizational Development at the San Antonio Spurs, ahead of the team’s move to its $510m Human Performance Campus at The Rock at La Cantera, Texas. Cullen told an audience at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London that the facility will boast human-centred design characteristics that promote collaboration and creativity. “A lot of times it’s focused on the coaching element, which is extremely important, and player amenities, but how do you facilitate those casual collisions?” said Cullen. “The people that would be in your facility the most and have the most touchpoints are probably not who you think they are. For us, it was our equipment guy. Very often you’ll go back and the players are hanging out with the equipment guy. Why? Because they can just hang out. It’ll be the athletic trainer, it’ll be the guy who’s taping his ankles and helping the guy rehab.” This has been uppermost in the Spurs’ thinking, who have even installed TVs close to the ceiling of their current facility to help take players eyes away from their phones.

Cullen added: “How can we make sure we have the best possible experience so that we’re actually giving them opportunities in their career development; giving them all the resources they want to advance? So that when we go into the marketplace to recruit these guys to have elite talent in our building, we’re not only attracting elite basketball players and elite coaches, but also the staff around them. That’s where collaboration is key. For us, the human-centred design piece is really trying to break down those interactions and it starts when the players pull up into the facility; what’s that experience when they enter in, get out, walk into the parking lot? Who are they walking past when they go to the locker room?”

3. Create a pleasant work environment

Beyond upgraded modalities, modern practice facilities need to be appealing destinations and Art Horne, the Director of Organizational Growth & Team Development at the Boston Celtics, speaks with a sense of awe about the 40-foot glass windows that overlook the city of Boston at the Auerbach Center, which opened in 2018. “Natural light is a huge plus in Boston when it’s cold and dark,” he told the Leaders Performance Institute the following year. “It’s an inviting place,” added Jay Wessland, the Celtics’ Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, who sat next to Horne. “All that natural light and the city skyline; we needed a place that people are encouraged to go and work out in; that they didn’t think it was a chore.” Such considerations were uppermost in the minds of PSG, who plan to move into their Paris Saint-Germain Training Center later this year. The complex is to include the Club House, which the club’s official website says is: “Entirely glassed at ground-floor level to provide views out into the surrounding landscape and create an illusion of levitation. Inside, a shape entitled ‘The Blue Flight’ rises skywards, symbolising the ultimate goal of all of the Club’s athletes.”

4. If you’re building a new facility, be sure your architect listens

Cullen explained that San Antonio had an issue with the sports-focused architects whom they consulted. “They try to give you the best rendition of what they’ve just completed,” he said. “They’ll kind of tell you what you want rather than really listening to what you need.” The solution was to partner with an architect that had experience of other sectors. “All of us now are becoming small tech companies; the technology’s integrated in everything we do. Why aren’t we looking at technology companies and how they work to see how it can impact how we’ll work in the future?” The Spurs were left pondering aspects and thinking points they may not have otherwise considered.

5. Does your building have agility?

Training facilities need to allow for the preferences of head coaches and PSG’s Ooredoo Training Centre, even as it comes to the end of its life cycle, has that covered – quite literally. In line with numerous clubs in European football, PSG have a 45x14m tent, which covers a pitch of synthetic turf right next to one of their main training pitches. It is a useful tool for group work. “A lot of work can be done outside,” Buchheit explained. “A portion of the group can be training outside on the pitch and the other half can be doing some strength work or some other exercises in this area – they don’t need to go back inside to take their boots off and a coach can do rotations. It offers efficiency and it also offers flexibility; depending on the coach, we’ll be using the tent a lot or not. It’s about being able to allow all staff and coaches to run their programmes as they wish. The agility of the building today is a legacy of the different coaches who worked with us in the past and so these adaptations are the fruit of a collective process involving the current and past backroom staff.”

6. Future-proof your facility – leave some space free

It can be tempting to throw the kitchen sink at a new facility but the Spurs and Cullen are wary of doing so or being locked into one type of technology. “We’re trying to be intentional about not designing a space for one specific use because it can very quickly become a closet if it can’t be used for more than one thing,” he said. “By far the No 1 thing people tell us is make sure you have enough space. You may not have all the nice designs and be able to finish it all out, be able to brand it, be able to story-tell the way you want, but make sure you get the space because you want to future-proof and you can’t move around in it.”

By John Portch

• Data interpretation and delivery can be a competitive advantage.

• Relate an athlete’s data back to their life.

• Is there a solution that goes beyond high performance?

Human-focused data – your advantage

“The winning and losing is not going to change,” Robby Sikka, the former VP of Basketball Performance and Technology at the Minnesota Timberwolves, told the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. “And there’s going to be more and more information. We’re going to have to give that information back to human beings. You’re going to have to deal with more data, you’re going to have to communicate it back, and you’ve got to do it more efficiently than others – and that’s your advantage.”

Using data to question norms and be more thoughtful

Sikka turned the discourse towards anterior cruciate ligament [ACL] injuries, where a change in behaviour, informed by data, my prevent a secondary surgery. “You might not be able to prevent the ACL, but if you can prevent the secondary surgery, you’ve probably done your athlete a service,” he said. “Those are the things I want our athletes and our medical staff to think about; ‘hey, we’re here, focus on the present: this guy’s got an ACL tear and we’ve got to deal with it. What are we going to do to prevent that secondary operation? What are we going to do now to counsel the athlete?’

In keeping with their principles, data is used positively and communicated clearly at the Timberwolves. “It’s about the ‘sandwich technique’,” he added. “We’re going to give the data back to them with two positives and one negative, but communicating it in a way that’s tied to the important parts of their life.

“If you’ve got a player who cares more about being a dad than anything else, I’m going to give him data that reflects what’s happening to him about being a family man. If he wants to be able to spend more time with his kid, how do I show him that information because that matters to him?”

How do you like your eggs?

Away from spreadsheets and digital interfaces, the Timberwolves apply the same principles to a problem in the canteen. Sikka told the story of a player who could not stand the eggs in the Timberwolves’ cafeteria. “It turns out he eats his mum’s eggs just fine,” he recalled. “We flew his mum out to meet with our chef to find out what’s she’s doing for the eggs. She then made eggs for the whole team.

“We embrace that; we wanted to understand: what does he eat? How does he respond to it? How does his body respond to load?

“That’s the kind of story we want to tell and that’s what we’re able to do with our group because we’re aligned. We care about each other.”

By Lorena Torres Ronda

Would a diverse environment be something beneficial for you or your organization?

Definitely yes – and it’s not just me saying it.

There is growing support from the scientific community as well as empirical evidence from a range of different fields that diverse work environments are more innovative, creative and rich in productivity.

As Chris Hirst points out in his book No Bullsh*t Leadership, ‘a 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in top quartile for ethnic and radical diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean… Diverse teams outperform those that aren’t.’

It often feels easier said than done, as creating or fostering a work environment rich in diversity requires that we know the sociological foundations of inclusion to really be successful in attaining an effective high performance environment. Firstly, let’s define and clarify some basic concepts.

Diversity means that “everybody is invited to the party” – you hire diversly, regardless of gender, race, skin colour, social background, physical ability, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity and so forth. But being invited to the party doesn’t automatically mean you feel seen, heard and valued – all characteristics of feeling included – but the ultimate feeling of inclusion is the feeling that you belong. ‘Belonging’ means that you are in an environment where you can be your authentic self and everybody accepts you as you are. In order to foster an environment of belonging, you need to treat people (and be treated) with equity, with fairness, where everybody is given what is necessary to achieve similar or the same results.

Treating people equally (equality) means treating everybody the same, and while it might sound counterintuitive, treating people as individuals – which often means treating them differently – and providing an environment of security and support, where there is a sense of acceptance, inclusion, and identity of the members in a certain group, is fair.

A final point on this topic, as I wrote elsewhere, if you were intentional in your efforts to hire, say, female or African American staff but it turns out that those individuals attended the same schools, learned from the same professors and mentors, went to the ‘same book clubs’, or people who surround themselves with people with the same ideas or who will support them in their ideas (people enjoy being reinforced in their own ideas!), probably won’t bring functional, cognitive diversity to a group, but superficial diversity.

Diversity can come from the traits listed above, but also importantly from deep-level diversity: personality, values, abilities or beliefs. These characteristics might be accompanied by challenges and biases that must be taken into account and managed when conflict emerges.

What helps to create an inclusive environment? What is needed? What is the correct strategic approach?

We don’t want it to be a box-ticking exercise. There is increasing awareness that we live in a professionally more globalized world. Today the geographical location is not a barrier, you can find an Australian in America, a European in South America, an American in Asia, and all possible combinations. Finding women in high performance is already more difficult, especially in certain jobs or leadership positions. Unfortunately, the promotion of inclusion of races, gender, sexual orientations or religions in a community traditionally dominated by white males is not a norm yet. And sometimes the driver of diversity is reduced to a box-checking exercise. But if we work in an organization that is going to bet on diversity and innovation, what helps to create those inclusive environments?

An inclusive environment promotes the idea that everybody is heard and we all have a voice. We listen and we learn; and in those conversations there is a room for productive disagreement and free exchange of ideas. But in order to facilitate this, it is imperative to create a trusting and safe place, be open to different approaches, and understand that different people feel safe in different ways.

One exercise one can do, before thinking about tools to approach diversity and create an inclusive environment, is to do an exercise in establishing your awareness of your unconscious bias. What does this mean? Influences from our background, cultural environment and personal experiences we might have can lead to subtle, even unintended (unconscious) judgments. But they are there, they are the product of learned associations, social and cultural conditions. Therefore, practicing being self-aware of those possible biases, and being aware of how our words and actions might affect others, or even raising awareness of others biases, is a first step towards creating an inclusive environment. ‘Practice being an advocate to encourage open, candid, and respectful conversation to develop relationships built on trust. An inclusive leader is self-reflective and attendant to the feelings of others. They’ve also “done the work” – they’ve attuned all manner of different intelligences (gender, cultural, generational) that helps them understand difference’ (ADP, 2022).

Gardenswartz & Rowe, Diverse Teams at Work (2nd Edition, SHRM, 2003). Internal Dimensions and External Dimensions are adapted from Marilyn Loden and Judy Rosener, Workforce America! (Business One Irwin, 1991).

Steps that can be taken to increase the number of female coaches and practitioners

I want to bring to the table something that has happen to me, when applying to a job or even when I had to hire people while working at an NBA franchise. To cite Chris Hirst again, ‘diversity is an undoubtedly desirable outcome, but when considering any individual hire or promotion, you have a duty, even moral responsibility, to hire the best possible person for the role, irrespective of who they are’. I have used almost the same exact words with my supervisor when expressing doubts about three candidates for a specific position, an argument that can be perceived as a less diverse team. On the one hand, we want the best candidate possible, and on the other hand, how are we ever going to get jobs that have been traditionally held by white males if we are never going to be given or give the first chance?! How do we know if a woman can be head coach in the NBA, or the performance director in a LaLiga team, if no one is given a chance to any women?! Of course we don’t have the experience – it’s almost impossible to obtain the experience! And the few that are sometimes afforded that opportunity face the pressure to excel, which is fair in itself, but are we being treated and evaluated as fairly as our male peers? How can we increase the number of female coaches or practitioners? Just give them the chance! And then, create an environment of fairness, and protect that environment, leaders, management, and staff. And the elephant in the room: remove those who are in the way and are the biggest barrier to change. Eliminate nostalgia from your organization. Make decisions to promote a diverse and inclusive workplace. Period.

How can teams better understand the atmosphere within teams – what data or feedback can you collect? Focus groups? One-to-ones?

I read the following in a book, and I thought ‘well, I wish my former supervisor, an apparent leadership expert, had read this sooner’. It read: ‘what you need to achieve change is for every member of your audience (AKA staff) to spend ABSOLUTELY NO TIME AT ALL thinking about how others need to change and to think only of the change they themselves will make’. I have experienced myself the huge damage that can be inflicted when people are given the opportunity to anonymously rate your colleagues. Rather than that, work to promote safe environments for having difficult conversations if needed. This enables everyone to be clear on what everybody else needs to do better.

Behavioral change happens when the individual grasps the need for them to change, and understands the benefit of that change. It is true that change is a challenge for most people; getting out of our comfort zone, the feeling of losing power or even fear of what might come, the feeling of being threatened by others’ success (huge in our sector!) – all are barriers to overcome on the path to future team success. Rather than allowing themselves to be inspired by others, some people puts barriers to new forms of thinking and behaving. If you are brave at heart, embrace the change rather than fear it. If you are able to adapt to challenging personalities, such as some players and coaches, why not be open to promoting diversity for the greater good of your team or your organization?

Lorena is one of six Leaders Performance Advisors, a group of leading performance thinkers providing more subject expertise to our member-only content and learning resources. To find out more about all our Performance Advisors, click here.

By John Portch

• Look for those individuals who can embody the values and cultural norms you are seeking to instil.

• Support your people and their families.

• When your culture can be clearly defined, it will become self-selecting.

Find those who know what it takes to win

In the early days of the Brooklyn Nets’ continuing rebuild under General Manager Sean Marks, he sought to bring in talents from organisations with a proven performance pedigree. The headliners were the likes of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, but it extended to the performance staff and beyond. As Marks told an audience at 2020’s Virtual Leaders Meet: Total High Performance Summit, the Nets needed to know what it takes to win. He said: “When you bring in the likes of Kyrie and Kevin, it was a matter of sitting down with them, learning what do they want to see, how do they want to grow. What do they need and what are they looking for in a successful operation?” Both were forthcoming. “Kevin said right off the bat ‘this organisation needs to have championship characteristics in everything we do’. That is one of our tenets here that we constantly talk about to this day, whether that’s how we scout, how we conduct our reports, conduct ourselves both on and off the court; and this goes for players and staff.”

Opine and share, disagree and commit

Cultural architects come in all guises and Marks has brought together a disparate group on and off the court. “I like the fact that I’m bringing in people whether it’s from baseball or all walks of life in terms of computer programmers; a group of coaches that are coming from a variety of different backgrounds too,” he said, mindful that it is these people who continue to shape the Nets’ culture. “Multiple have been head coaches before; some haven’t, some have been in developing systems, some have been key development coaches and some of the best in the business.” Marks sets himself up as Devil’s advocate and weighs up divergent views before deciding the best course of action. Everyone can have their say but they must respect his final decision. “The worst thing you can have is people behind closed doors saying ‘I wish I was involved’ or ‘I didn’t have a say in that decision’ or ‘man, I disagree with that decision’,” Marks added. “Nobody’s allowed to disagree once we’ve already committed. Once we’ve committed we’re all in and that’s the type of environment that I’d like to be part of.

We are family

Marks understands that the Nets’ culture is continuously being reshaped by the players and staff. He described them as the team’s “No 1 priority”. Moreover, people need to be free to focus on the day job knowing that their families and loved ones are provided for and supported while they are away. Marks said: “Right from the get-go we like to make them feel like they are family – like they are in the Brooklyn Nets family.” He acknowledges how much people have sacrificed to commit to the Brooklyn rebuild. “Nothing goes awry here. We wouldn’t want them left to their own devices; it’s a big city, it can be a little daunting. Where do you find a place to live, whether it’s nurseries or restaurants; you name it, but things are catered for [to] these players and staff so they come in here and they’re able to assimilate into Brooklyn and the Nets, hopefully as seamlessly as possible.”

Strong cultures are self-selecting

When a culture’s values and norms are defined, those who cannot conform tend to take themselves out of the equation. “You can’t have a metric system to say ‘this person is bought in and this person isn’t’,” said Marks. “Honestly, if you’ve built the right culture and continue to have the right people around it weeds itself out. I know that’s strange to say but I’ve had a few people over the course of the time here just say, ‘look, you guys are moving at a pace that I can’t handle. I’d love to say that I want to own this and be part of this, there’s great things ahead, but, to be honest, I’m not cut for this – you can do better’. When people come to me and say that, terrific, there’s better things on the horizon, whether it suits their families or their livelihoods, terrific. I don’t think I always need to be the one to say ‘I don’t think that person’s bought-in’ or ‘I don’t think they’re a high riser or a high flyer’.”

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SportTechie’s Startups series looks at companies and founders who are innovating in the fields of athlete performance, fan engagement, team/league operations and other high-impact areas in sports. If you’d like to be considered for this series, tell SportTechie about your mission.

World’s shortest elevator pitch: “We focus on training the mental side of basketball. It’s a part of basketball we think is undertrained.”

Company: VReps. “The goal of the company is to give virtual repetitions of your sport, primarily basketball right now. That’s the impetus behind it.”

Location: Seattle, Washington

Year founded: 2015

Website/App: https://vreps.us/; Google Play app; Apple Store app

Funding round to date: “We are Pre-Series A. It’s all Seed funding.”

Who are your investors? “We are all angel funding and have raised roughly $2.5 million.”

Are you looking for more investment? “If the right investors came, yes.”

Tell us about yourself, CEO and founder Shawn Cooper: “I was studying computer science at the University of Michigan and was a scout player for the women’s basketball team. I’m 6-foot, I was 190 pounds and athletic, so as a scout player I could play any of the five positions. For an upcoming opponent, we would be given the scout team playbook and we’d have four or five plays we’re supposed to simulate during practice. That means during a span of 48 hours I was supposed to memorize 20-25 plays because I’m learning all five positions and it’s just a paper playbook, that was the best way to learn. The idea behind the company was initially making NBA 2K for playbooks, that’s really where we started–a video game version of playbooks. We’ve since broadly expanded to preparing the mental side of basketball, so how do you play basketball? What’s the chess match that happens? When you go through a ball screen, what are the reads? Why are there different ways you defend a ball screen? That’s the idea that came out of it. My senior year, I dropped out for a year and a half and started the company. I did graduate, went back, but that was the start of it.”

Who are your co-founders/partners? “I don’t have co-founders but have some really important leadership to the company in Mike Greenman and Matt Stewart-Ronnisch. They are both supremely talented in the worlds they occupy. Matt, our CTO, is a very talented engineer. Met him in college and he joined pretty quickly after we started, probably a year after we started. Mike Greeman is our Director of Basketball and joined us two years ago after it became clear we had potential to impact the NBA. I have no connection to the NBA, I don’t know enough about basketball to chase that market. We hired him and he has the connections and the expertise. He is a very talented basketball mind. He’s the one that trained Chet Holmgren before the draft and Jalen Williams. We had three first-round picks (Holmgren, Williams and Christian Braun), three second-round picks (E.J. Liddell, Kendall Brown and Jabari Walker) and one player picked up on a Summer League contract (Jermaine Samuels). Chet was our highest draft pick at No. 2.”

The 2022 No. 2 overall draft pick Chet Holmgren had signed an NIL deal with VReps while playing for Gonzaga.

How does your product/service work? “The product is technology at the NBA level. We recreate NBA games as they happen, any NBA game from the past five years, and we’re able to put players in virtual reality in the shoes of any player during that scenario. That’s the product and that’s available for any NBA team to purchase, and we’re working with a handful of NBA teams. The service is the player development training that Mike does utilizing that product. He actually trains players and trains them on how to prepare for the NBA using previous NBA scenarios as examples. So, before Chet got drafted we put him into the shoes of any player in the league. After he got drafted, we put him into Oklahoma City’s offense to prepare to play with the team. So before he ever steps on the court with Oklahoma City, he’ll have been in their offense for almost an hour in virtual reality.”

What problem is your company solving? “Basketball training is very focused on individual skills–shooting, ball handling, weight lifting, vertical, speed. There is an entire segment that is mostly ignored, which is the development of your mental understanding of how basketball works and why those things are that way and the strategy behind it. We’re filling the gap between how a player gets from a really good college player to an exceptional NBA talent. A lot of that growth is on the mental side and we are accelerating that mental growth, which is traditionally learned almost exclusively through game time.”

What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Our product costs $10,000 to NBA teams as an initial offering. There are more expensive layers. The service to the NBA players, there are two tiers. One is $20,000 per year and the other is $60,000 per year. For the product, our target customers are the NBA teams. For the service, it’s NBA players or players that are preparing to be in the NBA. It’s not just NBA players.”

How are you marketing your product? “It’s entirely word of mouth right now and direct connections with those teams or players.”

How do you scale, and what is your targeted level of growth? “The technology we built has meaningful potential at nearly every level of basketball. It’s training the mental side of your brain in terms of the strategy aspect. Our growth will come, depending on what markets we want to grow into. Our growth from here, after we successfully enter the NBA market a little more, will be high-level international basketball and probably going into the college level in the U.S. We may also pursue other sports like the NFL. This technology has the same value in the NFL. We can do virtual reality training for NFL players. That’s another way we can grow. Depends on how much cash we get and from whom.”

Who are your competitors, and what makes you different? “Our nearest competitor would probably be Strivr. There’s also a company that does hockey simulations. Nobody, as far as we know, recreates historical games to relive that from the perspective.”

What’s the unfair advantage that separates your company? “Our unfair advantage is our technology expertise. We have 10 engineers working at the company. Very few companies our size are that heavily invested in their technology. We also have a few proprietary partnerships that give us access to the data streams we rely on. The recreation of the NBA games, for example, is through our partner, Sportradar. As of now, we are the only company that has access to those data feeds for player development purposes.”

What milestone have you recently hit or will soon hit? “We just trained the second overall draft pick. That was a huge accomplishment. We also trained a player that wasn’t on most draft boards through the draft process and ended up being drafted 12th.”

In what ways have you adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic? “NBA teams are very focused on in-person relationships, as are NBA players. Trying to create a business where we could work with NBA teams and NBA players remotely has been a challenge. I don’t think we’ve done it super successfully but we’ve managed to get through it and now we are growing on the other side of the pandemic, now that it’s mostly gone back to normal in how the NBA operates. We’re growing into the normal sales processes.”

Beyond the pandemic, what obstacles has your company had to overcome? “It’s a very slow market to adapt. For example, the idea of relying on analytics took almost a decade to catch on. Now, every team is heavily relying on analytics. The NBA moves very slowly and negotiating that very slow-moving market has been incredibly challenging. I’m not saying we haven’t been successful in it yet, because the company is still growing and trying to enter this market, but it’s an extremely challenging thing to overcome. ”

How has your company been affected by the current economic situation, and how are you dealing with it? “The current economy isn’t positive for startups and inflation has also made it more challenging, but I don’t think we’re doing anything special or noteworthy to mitigate those problems other than trying to reduce our spending as much as possible.”

What are the values that are core to your brand? “The values are engineering excellence and content excellence. We have a very talented basketball expert and a very talented engineering team and having a high-quality product that is impactful, it’s not just something to talk about, it actually does make players better. The impact we have is really a core tenant of the company itself.”

What does success ultimately look like for your company? “Success on a small scale is players that want to get better come to us as a way to mentally prepare and mentally enhance in any sport. Success at a big level is changing the culture around the importance placed on the mental side of basketball. If more people started to focus on the strategy behind their sport, that would be–on a broader scale–a lot more success from our perspective as a culture shift from just individual skill training to the broader picture of the strategy behind sports.”

What should investors or customers know about you—the person, your life experiences—that shows they can believe in you? “What gives me the best shot of making an impact in this market is my ability to build a very talented team. The team we have is exceptionally talented from an engineering and basketball perspective. I feel confident I can grow the engineering team as we need to, and also grow into deeper levels of basketball or build into new sports and build a team necessary to enter those markets.”

VReps allows players to create and watch plays through their app in 3D.

What made you start with basketball for VReps? “My true sports are lacrosse and ultimately frisbee. I was a very talented lacrosse player in high school but didn’t play in college because it’s really hard to do computer science and play a varsity level sport, so I decided to pursue a career. Now, I play at the highest level of ultimate frisbee. I play on a world-level team. Basketball is one of the easier sports to monetize and has one of the bigger markets and is a sport that has a very clear strategy to teach. Soccer is a little more fluid in the way strategy works. Basketball is a pretty ‘rock, paper, scissors’ type game where if they do this, you do this and they are going to do this and you do this. It’s not scripted in a football sense but more of a read-and-react sense, and it’s teaching that read-and-react decision making that is core to our business and what we can do. Basketball is the perfect petri dish for us to really prove our technology can grow in these sports.”

Do you have a favorite quote about leadership? “‘Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant’ from Charlie Munger. The best leaders are those that build world-class teams around them. As an entrepreneur, you usually have very limited resources, so you need to be able to identify your biggest weaknesses and hire talented people to fill those gaps first.”

Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected]

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