RONism #3 “It's like if we had a really good basketball team…

“It's like if we had a really good basketball team and then they wanted us to play baseball but they wouldn't let us hire four more players until we started winning games.”

You’re the coach of a championship basketball team.
You’ve coached them, trusted them, and watched them win.

Then your leadership comes by and says:
“We are making a switch and are going to play baseball now.
You still just have five players.
But win enough games—then you can ask for more.

So you start to play a 9-player game with a 5-player roster.
The game changes, but the expectations don’t.
No matter how good your team is—the losses pile up.
Morale dips. Frustration builds.

As a creative leader, this is all too real situation.
Demand increases. Timelines immovable. Everything is priority one.
You feel like a basketball team trying to win baseball games.

So you try your best to protect your team’s energy, deliver the work…
But you end up “satisficing”—meeting the ask while sacrificing time, quality, or cost.

Occasionally? Fine.
But when it becomes the norm? It breaks people.

I’ve been there. It used to keep me up at night - the feeling that I was not putting my team in a position to succeed.

Eventually, I learned:
You can’t win by playing the same game.
You have to refine the rules and they way that you lead.

One example of a small but powerful refinement we made:

We stopped presenting project schedules in the usual timeline or "gant charty" format and started building in a calendar view  - Mondays thru Fridays.
With the client, we’d work backwards from the deadline—together.

Suddenly, timelines became more real.
By visualizing the schedule in a way that is more familiar to how people are used to seeing days and months presented made a big difference.

We would see clients realize that they themselves could not provide the inputs or get the approvals needed in the timeframe they were asking for.

That simple move made the invisible visible—and brought sanity to the process and provided an awareness and understanding of what it would actually take to get the work done. A small refinement to the rules, but a big relief to the stress on the team.

Morby Create can help you redefine the rules.
We step in fast, help you rethink the game, and give your team the clarity and support to move with purpose—not panic.
So your team can stop playing baseball with five players—and start winning on their own terms.

Stay tuned next week for Episode #4 of RONisms.

What’s a RONism?  Over the past year or so, my former team (with the help of some very clever co-conspirators) had been secretly jotting down every metaphor, analogy, and oddball comparison I made. So... to honor my friends efforts, I thought it’d be fun to start sharing a “RONism  of the week”—with a little backstory and explanation.