Once again, Harvard Business Review’s Morning Advantage has come up with a gem in the form of the article below, with links to further articles:

Debunking the “Proven Winner” Myth

If you were the new owner of a middling National Hockey League franchise, and were looking to bring on a new head coach, you’d probably hire a proven winner, right? Well, according to Glenn Rowe in the Ivy Business Journal, hiring a winner may not be the best option. In fact, there’s a good chance your team will get worse — really.

Data shows that it’s extremely rare for a Stanley Cup-winning coach to replicate his success with a new team — and the same goes for professional baseball and football coaches too. Perhaps one reason is proven winners can’t leverage the “complex relationships” they developed within their old organizations. More bad news: this isn’t just a sports problem. Rowe cites this HBR article by Boris Groysberg, who found that the performance of star stock analysts fell as much as 20 percent when they jumped to a new firm. So what are companies to do? When looking for stars, look within your own organization. Train and mentor them. Work like hell to retain them.


Now you may not know much about the Stanley Cup – I certainly don’t – and still, I’m guessing you get the point.  I notice, too, how there’s advice tucked away for those people who want to be winners.  Kevin Evers, who put this brief article together, doesn’t dwell on it and still – the point is there.  Building and managing relationships is a significant aspect of what makes people successful.


You might be thinking “does that mean I should stay where I am?” or even “but I’ve been here for years and I’m just rubbish at building relationships!”  The point is, once you recognise you need to manage key relationships in your current or future employing organisation, you can start to think about what that means in practice.  Here are a few tips:

• If you want to build a relationship with others, you need to develop a relationship with yourself.  The more you understand your own drivers and motivations, the more you’ll be able to show insight into the drivers and motivations of others;  the more you are able to be authentic with yourself, the more you’ll be able to be authentic with others;
• Which relationships?  There are people towards whom you naturally gravitate and these may well become key friends and allies at work.  There are also any number of people who, because of their roles, are important to your success at work – often called “key stakeholders”.  Taking time to understand who you need to be in touch with is a great start in a new job;
• Don’t just wait until you need someone.  From the beginning you need to establish a relationship.  Make time for coffee.  Let people know you’ve arrived.  Get clear ahead of time about the kind of relationship you’d like to build – on which more below;
• Every now and then you’ll meet someone – a key stakeholder – and wonder what on earth they’re doing in the job.  And still, they are a stakeholder.  The more your emotions are stimulated when you think about that person, the more that’s a reflection on you.  Learn to build relationships of mutual respect even with the people you think least deserve it.  They have things to teach you as much as you have things to teach them.

I could write more but first, I’d love to know what challenges you face or what you aspire to do in your workplace relationships that you haven’t mastered – yet.  Please leave a comment to share your experience.