Page 150 - The Bible On Leadership

136 THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP

to Samson!). But Andreesen’s experiences, particularly his battle for
market share against Microsoft, have convinced him of the power of
teams:

When people quit, they tend to leave because they’ve lost faith in their
manager. A management team with a lot of respect can do a much better
job of retaining employees, which is why a company like Microsoft, Intel,
or Cisco could turn on a dime, do radically different things, and still have
those people say, ‘‘Okay, we’ll follow.’’ 13

SELECTING THE TEAM

Most of us remember the experience of choosing sides for kickball dur-
ing recess. The selection of the teams (‘‘choosing sides’’) was the pri-
mary predictor of how the game would go. No matter how good the
‘‘captain’’ was, if he or she made poor team selections, the game was
over before it began. Everyone knew the outcome, and the team that
was the victim of such poor selection could only hope for the bell to
ring to end the slaughter.
Every year, the National Basketball Association holds a draft of col-
lege players. There is a tremendous amount of suspense around this
process, because everyone knows a team’s fortunes, for the coming year
and years to come, hinge on this selection process. No matter how good
a coach or leader you are, if you do not select your team wisely, you
will be at a severe disadvantage. Red Auerbach, for years the coach of
the successful Boston Celtics dynasty, was a master at picking the right
players, particularly a young man named Bill Russell from an obscure
school in California. But he also picked a group of teammates to com-
plement Russell, each with a particular role to play.
‘‘How you select people is more important than how you manage
them once they’re on the job,’’ observes Auerbach. ‘‘If you start with
the right people, you won’t have problems later on. If you hire the
wrong people . . . you’re in serious trouble.’’ Auerbach knew how to
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