I tend to watch sports on TV only when the playoffs and finals arrive which saves me time and helps prevent the waistline wobble that results from the sports watcher’s diet. While watching the LA Lakers clinch a berth in the NBA finals it dawned on me that the life cycles of teams and businesses are similar.

The only sport I watch on a regular basis is Formula-1 auto racing. It’s demanding, precise and exacting nature appeals to something in me, probably because the B.S. gets left in the garage once the racing starts.

Knowing that business and sports success share many principles and rely on teams of people, lets explore what is behind the inevitable ups and downs. Every team is born as a kind of amorphous thing with every member feeling out the atmosphere, the leaders and their place in the organization. To grab a common golfer’s term, we are all searching for the “sweet spot” in the life cycle of our enterprises.

Your team will only get to that desired place with time and clear direction. I’d sure love to know what Phil Jackson says to Kobe Bryant everyday! In high performance mechanical devices there is a process of “bedding in” which in auto racing could mean putting a little wear on the brake pads for instance, getting them on good terms with the brake rotors. Everybody on the teams must know their role and formally or informally find effective ways of working together. The team has to be guided through this phase by good leadership. Great teams get to that place by being helped, not forced.

There are no new teams where everybody fits. Some members have to play smaller roles and some have to be shown the door. The “bedding in” process and the assessment process both should be done early. If you get stuck in the “just trying to make it work” phase for too long, you are probably not destined for a championship or the growth you imagined.

Watching Ferrari or McLaren in F-1 or how Jackson led the Chicago Bulls and Lakers leads to some conclusions about the attributes found in winning teams.  They have clear objectives and agreed goals. If you can’t do that, you can’t get there from here.  The members of successful teams learn to support and trust each other.  However there is the kind of openness that allows conflict without destroying the team spirit. There are sound procedures for getting things done. It is essential that the team reviews their performance as individuals and as a group regularly. Each team member must have a strong sense of what they can contribute and how they want to develop personally.

If you can get these things going on, you can not only reach that mythical “sweet spot” your team can actually remain on top for an extended period of time. But we know that everything changes over time. Some team members will begin to look back more often than forward, expecting some entitlement rewards for past accomplishments rather than today’s achievements. Even the leaders may stop asking the questions necessary to keep attitudes fresh. You may have the past glories, but in reality the fuel gage is dropping toward empty. The sharpest people may begin to leave, leaving instability in their wake and the vaunted winning team literally dies.

As a leader you have to push fast and hard for reform or as I prefer to see it, rebirth. You want the new team to get through the “bedding in” process as quickly as possible because you dream of returning to the sweet spot, the winners circle. Ron Dennis in Formula-1 or Coach Jackson could probably teach a course on this cycle.