The Basketball Team Analogy

Which Route Will You Take

With March Madness in full swing (Go Wisconsin!), brackets busted, hearts happy, and your office pool down the drain; I only found it fitting to finally post the Team Analogy. There is the idea that for me to succeed you have to fail, this idea, wherever it may have come from is extremely counter productive and dangerous. (Check out a previous post about this idea...) But lets dive in…

Now imagine this, you are a member of a strong and successful basketball team. The team consist of about 10 players, but you are the 6th man. Therefore, you are a key and critical player, the  relief and reinforcement for your team. But you may not be the "star" and you more than likely do not start in any of the games. But you do get a good amount of court time and you play a key role in the success of the team.

However, as the 6th man you aspire to more, you want to do more you want more responsibility within the team. Here is where we determine the type of person you truly are… During the a routine practice you can either:

1. Stay late work harder, with still just the possibility of starting in an upcoming game due to the visible improvements and hard work. With that you may have the opportunity to take the place of a current starter because you have increased your capabilities.
2. Or, you can play a bit dirty… No one will ever know that you had malice intent when you "accidently" undercut your teammate during a rebounding drill, right??? To sacrifice a good teammate for your own personal  and selfish gain.

Now with this decision there are a couple of variables at play, 1. the moral compass of the individual and 2. the clear understanding of roles and their value to the team. I am pretty sure that if I created a survey with these to ideas as my variables (and accounted for honesty), I would find a strong correlation in decision making based on clarity of role and moral compass.

It seems clear and easy superficially, but in the moment,
when we need to make a quick decision
we revert back to our basic instincts.
Many of those instincts are based on our
foundation as an individual (moral compass).

Which route will you take. More often than not, most people say that they will choose route A. It just is the right thing to do, however, when someone has a vested interest in achieving a goal for whatever reason, sometimes their moral compass can get skewed by that interest.  So here is how the story turns out if you chose A or B:

1. Your team gone from good to great, you may still not start, but you understand why and understand the value you bring to the team. You have managed to increase your bandwidth and skill, benefiting the entire team. 
2. Your team has gone from good to bad, you have sacrificed your own teammate, ultimately changing the dynamic of the team, in a very negative way and counter productive way. You have an injured a player, who may or may not recover. Brought a level of unneeded chaos to their personal lives. Further, you have also not seen the improvement of skill in yourself, due to the lack of true work, but you did get what you ultimately desired...

 So which route will you take?