Elevarse Performance Consulting

What separates an extraordinary team from a group of talented individuals who constantly underachieve?

It is never talent alone.

Corporate boardrooms are filled with teams of superstars who fail to deliver simply because they cannot agree on operational norms, refuse to own hard decisions, and resort to finger-pointing when results drop.

If you want to know what it takes to turn around an underperforming operation and sustain elite execution under intense pressure, look at professional and collegiate athletics. In the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball, only 23 percent of head coaches make it past year four. Their annual turnover hovers between 20 and 25 percent—more than double that of S&P 500 chief executives. They operate under relentless public scrutiny, tight salary caps, and razor-thin margins where winning is the only metric that preserves survival.

McKinsey Transformation partnered with more than 25 championship coaches, athletic directors, and general managers across professional franchises and Division I programs to dissect what it truly takes to build and remake a world-class team.

The leaders who engineered rapid, historic turnarounds did not rely on corporate slogans. They executed four non-negotiable principles.

1. Establish the Uncompromising Program Standard

Most organizational transformations stall out because leadership establishes broad, vague goals rather than concrete daily standards. People cannot execute what they cannot visualize.

When Dan Bartholomae took over as athletic director at Western Michigan University in 2022, the athletic program had plummeted to an average ninth-place finish in conference standings. There was no common identity or overarching theory of winning. Instead of tolerating the status quo, he launched deep-listening tours across the organization, redefined the core operational standard, and broke down silos between independent athletic teams. Some people walked away because they could not handle the standard, but those who bought in elevated the entire university. Within three years, the program climbed to fourth, the hockey team captured the 2025 national championship, and all five fall sports reached the postseason.

As Brian Wright, general manager of the San Antonio Spurs, emphasized, each day must look and feel identical in expectations, communication, and discipline. When the standard becomes automatic, the scoreboard takes care of itself.

2. Recruit Complementary Capability Over Raw Star Power

A roster stacked with individual superstars who refuse to sacrifice ego for the mission will lose to a synchronized, hungry unit every single time.

Elite coaches use rigorous analytics paired with behavioral insight to identify the exact attributes required to win. Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr highlighted that championship chemistry requires a deliberate blend: hungry young players fighting to prove themselves and climb the ladder, balanced with seasoned veterans who bring calm composure, situational intelligence, and the muscle memory of how to win and lose together.

Furthermore, great turnarounds do not start with mass purges. Talent selection is about creating an environment where individuals can maximize their contribution. At Notre Dame, legendary coach Lou Holtz gave walk-ons and student managers the exact same dignity, appreciation, and accountability as his Heisman Trophy winners. When team members know leadership has their backs, they will run through walls for the mission.

3. Codify the Execution Playbook for the Entire Enterprise

Inspiration without an operational system produces chaos. Elite sports franchises eliminate ambiguity by codifying how work gets done across every single department.

When Amy Trask served as chief executive of the Oakland Raiders, she discarded the rigid corporate pyramid in favor of an integrated circle where business operations and on-field execution moved in absolute harmony. Football performance generated revenue, and business discipline funded the talent on the field. She anchored the entire organization around four concrete operating behaviors: communication, cooperation, collaboration, and coordination.

Trask lived the playbook personally. If ticket envelopes needed stuffing before a game or a charity initiative needed operational muscle, she rolled up her sleeves and worked alongside the front line. A leader cannot demand a standard of discipline from their team that they refuse to embody themselves.

4. Distribute Leadership and Demand Collective Ownership

Command-and-control leadership is dead. In high-velocity environments, you cannot wait for directives from the top office to solve problems on the front line.

Elite athletic directors and head coaches view themselves as leaders of leaders. They empower assistant coaches, trainers, and role players with real-time decision-making authority during critical moments. When leaders actively listen to and act on frontline recommendations, McKinsey research demonstrates their organizations are 80 percent more likely to successfully implement breakthrough operational practices.

Winning demands what Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman calls choosing hard. Easy choices lead to stagnation and excuses. Choosing the hard road of relentless observation, radical accountability, and unwavering standards creates an operational edge that competitors cannot match.

Operational Execution Checklist for Leadership Teams:

Step 1: Standard Definition Audit

• Schedule a 60-minute listening debrief with frontline staff this week to evaluate whether daily behavioral standards are clearly defined and consistently practiced across all shifts.
• Identify and eliminate any performance grading on a curve where missing steps in core protocols are casually excused.

Step 2: Operating Playbook Codification

• Document a one-page operating playbook outlining the required daily routines, communication cadence, and handoff protocols for both operational leaders and frontline teams.
• Establish the four core disciplines of communication, cooperation, collaboration, and coordination as explicit performance evaluation criteria.

Step 3: Real-Time Feedback and Role-Playing Drills

• Replace passive check-in meetings with active observation on the floor.
• Institute mandatory weekly drills and scenario walkthroughs so team members practice critical actions before executing them in live operations.