Tournaments & Teams (EP.12)
Last Updated
March 20, 2020
[Note: This episode was recorded in late February and early March 2020 before the global spread of COVID-19, and the subsequent cancellation of the NCAA tournament.]
Basketball, business, and beyond! Exploring the topic of building better work teams through the lens of sport. We talk competition and cooperation, rivals and allies, is it really possible to give more than 100%, business “superstars,” and a whole host of fascinating things.
Guest: Laura Jorgensen
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
LAURA JORGENSEN currently serves as the Senior Director, Financial Operations and Analysis where she is responsible for driving Fractured Atlas’s strategic financial goals. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas she held roles ranging from the CEO of e-commerce start-up The RunnerBox to varied strategic and financial positions at Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. She holds a BSBA in Economics from The University of Miami and in her spare time you can find her pedaling her bike up and down the mountains of Asheville, NC. Prior to her life on two wheels, Laura was a First Team All-State shooting guard, multi-time AAU Basketball state champion, and still remains the only woman to ever win Royal Caribbean’s hotly contested March Madness pool.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
This is the third preamble that I’ve recorded for this episode as life and events have changed drastically for most of us over the past few weeks. Lauren and I recorded the interviews for this episode in late February and early March 2020, before the global spread COVID-19. As the pandemic made us actively re-think how and where we gathered together as humans, it became increasingly uncertain as to whether this year’s NCAA March Madness basketball tournament would be played. As you probably know at this point, the tournament was officially canceled a couple days before it was scheduled to start... and our planned release of this episode.
While this episode is framed around a conversation that includes talk of the tournament, it’s ultimately an episode about high performing teams, whether in basketball, business, or beyond. And it was a fun conversation, so we’re releasing it.
Before we slide into this episode, we wanted to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you to the medical professionals and scientists who had been and continued to work so tirelessly, oftentimes putting their own selves at risk in service of others' health and safety. Thank you. Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy the episode.
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. A podcast about well, that. On this episode teams and not just any teams, basketball teams. Why? Because I work with two of the biggest college basketball fans I know and somehow this episode is going to determine who is the most diehard fan going into the NCAA March Madness tournament. Basketball not your thing? Don't tell my guest. But we'll also be discussing cycling teams. So win-win. I'm joined from the top by podcasting's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin. Lauren, how's it going?
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm good. I gave you some early laughter on that.
Tim Cynova:
That's right. We'll leave it in.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think we should.
Tim Cynova:
It's authentic. You've just returned from LA with several interviews in the can for an upcoming “Ruffin on the Road” episode. I'm pretty excited for what you captured there.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm excited too. I'm not excited about the terrible pictures I took in LA, but we all have growth areas.
Tim Cynova:
Did you take the pictures with your Nokia? I did not. They're not part of my two megapixel photo series. The fact that they're bad, that's actually worse. I took them with a really good camera.
Lauren Ruffin:
You could just say, it was with your Nokia.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, yeah. "All my photos these days are just with my Nokia phone."
Lauren Ruffin:
I should. I should just lie.
Tim Cynova:
Today we're joined by Laura Jorgensen or LJ, she's commonly known. We met LJ when she was hired as the senior director of finance at Fractured Atlas. As soon as this podcast launched, I knew that come March Madness, we are going to record this episode. LJ, welcome to the podcast.
Laura Jorgensen:
Hey Tim. Hey Ruffin. Happy to be here today.
Tim Cynova:
LJ, we've heard a bit about Lauren's basketball chops already on previous podcast episodes. So let's start with you launch us into your own basketball related background. How did you come to the topic?
Laura Jorgensen:
Oh man, I've played basketball for a long time. I guess I started playing as a kid, fell in love with it, went to a pretty good high school for it, so played there and then got a scholarships playing college and tore my ACL three times in the matter of oh man, probably 12 months. So my collegiate career ended quickly, but straight from there, ended in a good way. Straight from there, I went straight into coaching because I wasn't quite ready to give up the game. So I guess when I would have been a sophomore at college, started coaching back at the high school where I played and coached high school and AAU for a long time. So coached women's teams, coached men's teams. It was a lot of fun. So have a lot of experience with not only being on a team but putting together teams. I love it. I love sports a lot. So it could be basketball, it could be cycling, whatever you want to talk about. I could talk about teams there. I have experience as a player and as a coach on the basketball side.
Lauren Ruffin:
I didn't realize we have parallel basketball lives.
Laura Jorgensen:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Except you made it to college before you busted your knees up and I broke my kneecap my senior year.
Laura Jorgensen:
I don't know which is worse.
Lauren Ruffin:
And then broke it again my first year.
Laura Jorgensen:
Which is worse? I'm not sure. The dream question before you go or why you're there.
Lauren Ruffin:
I don't know. I don't know anyone who's come back from the broken kneecap. People come back from ACLs now, but ACL back when I was in college-
Laura Jorgensen:
Devastating.
Lauren Ruffin:
That was, you're done.
Laura Jorgensen:
Yeah. It's so common now. It used to be a deal breaker, but yeah, I got surgery twice in the first year. I came back. I got injured probably first two weeks I was there and made it back for second semester, because that's where the bulk of the games are anyway. And poof, pretty much. Right? I was freak accident. I had my knee brace on and I went to go box out like I was coming back hard [inaudible 00:04:14] hit me in my hamstring and actually shoved my knee so far forward that it tore it against. So a total freak thing because it didn't even go sideways. I anticipated just taking the first semester, the next year off to do rehab and that's when I tore it again. And that's why I was like... So I had already started coaching, my high school thinking it would be temporary and then after I tore it again, that was it. I mean, there was just no coming back from that one. So I still don't have an ACL in my right knee-
Lauren Ruffin:
Who needs it?
Laura Jorgensen:
Who needs it?
Lauren Ruffin:
Overrated.
Laura Jorgensen:
Overrated. Totally agree.
Lauren Ruffin:
You definitely don't need it to be a professional cyclist. So I mean I feel like everything... You barely need a knee for that?
Laura Jorgensen:
No, no.
Lauren Ruffin:
Just some thighs. You just need thighs.
Laura Jorgensen:
Totally fine. Yeah. So one thing led to the other. That's how I kind of got into cycling, because you don't knees for it and most other things you do.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's how I got into riding as well.
Tim Cynova:
According to Lauren Ruffin, you do not need knees for cycling.
Lauren Ruffin:
You don't. Put that on the wall.
Laura Jorgensen:
Put it on a poster, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
I'm not sure if this episode is going to be easy to edit or impossible.
Lauren Ruffin:
We're not going to act right, apparently. We're off the rails.
Tim Cynova:
I've been in meetings with both of you together and this is to be expected. LJ, you told that story during your interview for the job. That wasn't one of the most painful moments. I think my hand started sweating as you were talking and telling that story about your ACL, that's usually not something that's included in a job interview. You're asking questions. Someone tells you a story and you're like, "Oh God."
Laura Jorgensen:
How did that come up? What was the question?
Tim Cynova:
You were doing the top grading interview. Going one thing at a time chronologically through your history.
Laura Jorgensen:
Yeah. So Ruffin when I coached, I also taught middle school.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh. Got it.
Laura Jorgensen:
Which was kind of a deviation from my collegiate experience as a economics major. That was kind of weird to go teach seventh graders, but it was fun.
Lauren Ruffin:
I also coached. I was way too intense to coach high schoolers now, so I got fired from that job.
Laura Jorgensen:
That's great.
Lauren Ruffin:
I was like way too... I was nuts in a good way.
Laura Jorgensen:
In a good way.
Lauren Ruffin:
The parents of small independent schools just really want their kids to hear great things and I didn't have anything good to say about that team.
Laura Jorgensen:
Neither. I cut that right at the beginning. I had a meeting before tryouts with all the parents. I was like, "I don't want to hear from you. If your kid's going to be late to practice, don't call me. If it's not your kid calling. Don't even pick up the phone. I don't want to hear from you. They are 15 years old and if you don't like it then don't even have them try out." But there was a little more leeway with the school I suppose.
Lauren Ruffin:
After that I went and coached a fifth and sixth grade girls team at an Orthodox Hebrew school, which was the loveliest experience. I had so much fun with those kids. They were absolutely terrible. So many kids didn't have TVs. They'd never even seen a basketball game. It was the most fun I ever had because there was nothing serious about it.
Laura Jorgensen:
Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. I did camps for a while in the summers to make money. We would do... As a coach, at a school, they pay you, I don't know. It's peanuts to coach. So the one kind of thing they toss your way is that you can use the gym all summer to have camps and that's where you can make your money. So just imagine me all summer long with all ages. Oh, I had a blast. It was the most-
Lauren Ruffin:
It's so much fun.
Laura Jorgensen:
Oh, amazing. When I go home, I still stop by the gym. It still feels like home. You know that feeling when you walk in?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. No, I know.
Laura Jorgensen:
"I'm home." Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
So speaking about TVs, one of the first things I think you both said when we started working together was, "Come March Madness, essentially, don't bother me. I will roll out a television into wherever I'm working and have it on all day long." What is it about college basketball that you two find so interesting, exciting, willing to shut down other areas of your life, perhaps to be part of that?
Laura Jorgensen:
I think it's the authenticity. I think that it's still pure at that level. People play so hard, it means so much to them to win a national championship and I think you lose a lot of that once you get to the NBA. These are dreams. When we talk about our injuries, I think why it's so devastating is because this is a dream you've had since you were a kid, right? To go play in college, you sit in your front yard and you're doing the countdown, "Three, two, one." You're doing the whole deal and so it really is. It's like a lifetime dream that you're watching and you get to experience.
Laura Jorgensen:
For me, I get to experience it by curiously, by just watching it and you just see there's so much magic in March Madness things that shouldn't happen do. It's the Cinderella stories. It's the emotion you get to hear about the fans and the players and the coaches. There's just a lot of mystique to it that I don't think you can find anywhere else. And across sport, I mean it happens at a lot of different tournaments like this world cups and things, but it's just the gravity of it and what it means for people if they were to win it, that you get to watch the whole thing unfold. That you get to see the whole story and that's what's so cool to me.
Lauren Ruffin:
I would say all of that and having played for so long and having been such an obsessive athlete up until recently, you realize mastery, what you're watching is... Especially once you get down to the last 16 teams, you're watching kids who have mastered their craft of playing this game and then you're watching five people work together and basketball is like... My favorite thing to do is to put on headphones and go to a game in person and just watch it in silence. Just with other music on and watching people move and you realize the rhythm of a game and when you're in, the muscle memory that you never forget. So there's a part of me that plays a game with them. When you're watching people play at a high level and it happens in particular women's basketball players, because the game is so pure in a way that that can get into that zone watching college guys play. And then on a less revert level gambling, a couple of prop bets, 50 cents here, a dollar there.
Laura Jorgensen:
It doesn't even matter. A nickel doesn't even-
Lauren Ruffin:
It doesn't matter. When you're competitive, just they're not big bets, but I'm going to win that shit.
Laura Jorgensen:
Yeah, there's a lot of pride in what did that March Madness pool. There is a lot of pride in that. And it sounds like-
Lauren Ruffin:
And shame when someone who picks on colors wins, it's the worst thing ever.
Laura Jorgensen:
It's embarrassing. How many people do you think we'll have in our Fractured Atlas pool? Will it be me and you Ruffin?
Lauren Ruffin:
Two.
Laura Jorgensen:
Two coming in hot. Got it.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, exactly. It'll be us. Unauthorized use of Zoom to watch games.
Laura Jorgensen:
The worst thing is if we extend it to the Slack channel and we come in last place, which will probably-
Lauren Ruffin:
It's going to happen. That's what's going to happen.
Laura Jorgensen:
Good. Glad we're already taken care of. Good.
Tim Cynova:
So we'll come back to how you pick your brackets, but one of the reasons that this episode actually makes it into the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Podcast is that one of the things that you've said was it's all about high performing teams, not necessarily the most or the best talent. How does that show up on the court and if one of you will please connect us to work?
Lauren Ruffin:
The team-manship at a college level is totally different than it is once you get to the NBA. Because often the teams that win or go to the final four aren't teams that are super stacked. Especially now that you're seeing people go play overseas. I think it's going to be interesting to watch the men's game developed because it's going to become, as kids are opting out of our sort of rigged collegiate system. What you're going to have are just team players and coaches are having to be really thoughtful about how they put teams. I shouldn't say... Because, they're always thoughtful. But how do you create the ultimate chemistry on a team when you don't have a superstar? Because, the superstars are essentially at this point popping out of college basketball.
Laura Jorgensen:
I think like Ruffin is saying, it's really a fine balance because if you look at historically the Cinderella stories in the tournament, the teams that go really far, that shouldn't have gone really far. It's the Davidson's that had a Steph Curry and then a bomb team or like when Kawhi Leonard was at San Diego State and they went... These are future superstars that were surrounded by a supporting cast of everyone who had bought in. That's where I think the team comes in. As a coach, I think it's essential at the collegiate level because you do have so many one and dones guys that come from one year and are out.
Laura Jorgensen:
That generally isn't enough time to build chemistry. So you either have to be a legitimately amazing chemist that can get everyone to gel in a matter of months or you need to get a group of guys together. It's all about that common goal, right? We all want to win the championship, but how does my personal goal of making it to the NBA and getting a lottery after this season fall into play? There's a lot of components that are swirling around and it's getting everyone on board for that same thing and that's how you get the championship team when everyone's all in on it, they're in and on it for each other.
Laura Jorgensen:
I think the best teams I've ever coached or I've ever watched, you can tell, the key thing is that I want to win more for you than for me. I think that's the same thing at work. When you can get people around you that, "I want to do this thing really well for that person and they want to do that well for me." That's when you get really high performing team. When it becomes more than just about you. When that level disappears is when I think you get the elevated teams across any level. It can be in sports, it can be in work, in business. The me disappears and it's more about the us.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's one of my favorite things about the nonprofit sector. Because in theory what we're working towards is really a mission and not the me. That often doesn't happen that way, which is why we have this podcast. But I think that's spot on. The other interesting thing about that chemistry that happens over time with the team is... And I keep thinking about Michigan with John Howard. That team stayed together for a long time and went on to do really awesome things and the negative space, the fact that they didn't win a college championship. It's just so interesting because you have these high performing teams that sometimes just don't get it done.
Lauren Ruffin:
They came back, they did what? Three years together? I think they stayed until their junior year. They were for three years in a row as they came into college, predict to win a championship and did not get it done.
Laura Jorgensen:
But they had that bond. That's like what we're talking about that, "I don't want to let you down, so I'm going to make sure everything... I get my job done because if I don't get my job done, I'm going to let you down, I'm going to let the team down." That's the same in work. You've got to have that spirit of, this has to happen or otherwise it's on me and all the other pins fall, if I don't make sure this happens. When you have really high performing people, they understand that concept and the last thing they're going to do is let their teammates down.
Lauren Ruffin:
Also staying in the face of other offers.
Laura Jorgensen:
Exactly. That's exactly right.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's another interesting... That, that connection to your teammates will do. That correlates to the workplace. We're on a shared leadership team and so the duty that I have to my colleagues, as we all think about whether we're going to stay at Fractured Atlas, take other opportunities that are coming all of our way. It really becomes more of a collaborative conversation than it would be just like, "I'm out of here. I got this other job." It's college sports man.
Tim Cynova:
There's the classic study that was done about investment bankers, highly compensated investment bankers and followed them as they went to their next job from where they sort of made their name and found out that for the most part, none of them were as successful in that next job as they were in the previous job, unless they brought their original team with them. I'm actually fascinated by that. That group that's together actually might be the reason everyone's high-performing, not this person from that person.
Tim Cynova:
We see this a lot in sports. I see this surprisingly in schools and teachers where the third grade class is really high performing. "This class is really high performing and so we're going to break up those teachers and spread them around to other classes or the other classes or grades that aren't as high performing." Then you just end up with usually less than you had before you started because there was something about that group of people who were together that had each other's backs. They had that trust and psychological safety. They work together in a different way and it just wasn't that one person.
Laura Jorgensen:
We see that all the time in sports. I think it's that team. It's that special magic and you can't put your finger on it. And it's why it's so hard to find as a coach because in their individual components, it's one in one, but then it's like one in one makes for. All of a sudden this magic comes together with these specific people that even though they would be superstars in and of their own right, it's that supporting cast that brings the best out of them. You know what I'm talking about. You meet those people that they just bring you up. It's like you want to be your best, they want to be their best, and it's just like oof magic and that's what makes the teams.
Laura Jorgensen:
It's always been interesting to me where that comes from. Is that from the leadership at the top? I think a lot of times it is. They find those people that fit together and they find how to spark that in you that brings the best out of you. But that's interesting for me from both a coaching level in sport but also from a leadership level in business. What forces those interactions? Does it come from the bottom up? Does it come from the top-down? That's always something that I've grappled with. I don't think the answer is always the same but just something to think about.
Lauren Ruffin:
I've always been interested in leaders who... The law firm model, when entire practice groups leave and go elsewhere and also the managerial style of, "I'm going to get this job and I'm bringing everybody from my old job that I like working with me." Obviously I think all the time like, "Could you pluck the four of us from Fractured Atlas and put us someplace else and we will work." Or is it the unique mission? The way that we work here? Is it the organization that makes us high performing? Well one, are we high-performing? If so, is it the organization or is it the chemistry the four of us have?
Tim Cynova:
I think there are some questions that we dove into in the previous shared leadership conversation. It's like the chicken and egg of trust. Where does it come from? I'm curious, LJ, because we alluded to this earlier, not only do you have a background in basketball, but you're currently a professional cyclist in addition to your full time job at Fractured Atlas and running another company. Cycling is different than basketball and that on a basketball team, there are the players and if you win a championship, everyone who is on that team wins the championship.
Tim Cynova:
In cycling, at least the broad perception is that a bunch of people are working so that one player can win, so one person can win. Then I guess if you think about the tour de France, one rider wins that and there are seven or eight other people, just riders on the team who don't get to stand on the podium, let alone many more people behind the scenes who are keeping the whole thing going. Can you juxtapose those two things? How are the dynamics different or the same when you think about a cycling structure versus a basketball structure?
Laura Jorgensen:
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said the broad perception. Because, the thing is that everyone outside of the cycling world looks at it this way. My mom will check results and I've done a lot of things. I've been the sprinter, I've been the lead-out and when I wrote for a really top sprinter in the world and I was last lead out. So my job is to be a last place. I've been first lead-out, I've been last. My mom would be like, "You got 47th place." And I like killed it. We won the race. It is the broad perception that one person wins the race, but in reality that's not what's actually happening. Generally there's six to eight people on a team and they're all working for one person, but if you get the right mix, everyone has a job to do.
Laura Jorgensen:
I feel like between basketball and cycling, basketball I love because it's such a quick game, things are happening all the time. Whereas cycling, you have a meeting with your director before the race. This is the plan. There are intangibles that may happen during the race, but generally you know who you want to win and that is generally what happens. Now everyone's got to buy into the plan or otherwise it's not going to work because if everyone doesn't go all in for that one person, it is going to be a problem, if another team does that. So you're going to line up six people, you're all going to go as hard as you can, make everyone else go flying off the back till the one person sprints.
Laura Jorgensen:
If one person isn't fully committed to that, you're going to lose. So there I think is actually a bigger onus of team commitment in cycling, even though it would appear as if there's not. In basketball, if one person doesn't do, let's call it their job, you can still win the game. In cycling at the top level, you probably can't. One person can mess up the whole thing. I find you need to be jailed more as a team in cycling, even though from the outside it may look like it's more of an individual sport. So it's kind of like this ironic situation you have going on. But from inside the sport everyone is all in. My favorite pictures in cycling are the sprinter winning the race and every one of his teammates have their hands in the air, in the background, especially if they're like right up, they could probably be on the podium and they don't even care. Their hands are in the air because they just won the race.
Laura Jorgensen:
But to your point, a lot of people from the outside don't see that. But it's a super team sport. Everyone has a different role, everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. So I think it's even more like the workplace. Because if you're a director and you're compiling a team, you need lots of different things. You need one person that can just be a workhorse. And then you need one person that can kind of be the in-between. You need one person that can just sprint faster than anyone. And finding all those individual pieces that work together in a functional way is a really, really difficult job. So my hats are off to all the directors out there. And then you've got to make a game plan for each race. So it is difficult, but there's so much teamwork that goes on in cycling. It's out of control and that's probably why I've always loved it.
Laura Jorgensen:
I've always been the type of person I would rather help someone else win the race than win the race. That is way cooler feeling to me. I've done both. There's something more to it, sacrificing your race for someone else, for me. But for other people, they just love to win the race. So you put the two of us together and it's great, but that's the role of a director or the role as a leader in a team, trying to find the right pieces that are going to deliver the result.
Tim Cynova:
I just lucked into some research about cooperation and competition and why it matters. They studied what happens if people compete first and then cooperate? And what happens if they cooperate, then compete. They found that people who cooperate first then compete actually creates friendly rivalries. And then Gavin Kilduff, I think that's how their name is pronounced, did more research about the rival effects and how rivalry impacts your own team's performance. Specifically with NCAA basketball. The better your rival does in the post season this year, the more likely you are to succeed next year. So I thought, "Perfect. I just landed on this research, we're going to be talking NCAA basketball." I know you two have feelings about UNC and Duke. That was actually mentioned in the, the rivalry research about their performance. Curious to get your thoughts on cooperation, competition and rivalry.
Lauren Ruffin:
[inaudible 00:22:00] myself but that's the only way it could work, is if we were collaborators before we were competitors. Because once you're my competitor, especially athletically, I hate you and there's no coming back from that. I can't imagine it working the other way around. Although I mean nowadays the athletic kids, they kind of play AAU and they like each other. But I don't know, I wasn't raised that way. That was not my upbringing. Once we're in the darkness, we have to stay there. We can't come over the other side.
Laura Jorgensen:
It's interesting. Especially in cycling, I've been teammates with almost everyone and now we're all on different teams and all this and it feels like there's a level of cooperation but once that gun goes off or once that ball is tipped, that's all over. It is full competitor and I think in a really healthy way. We are going head to head for the next 40 minutes and after that's over we'll go get a beer. But for right now it is fully on and I think that's a really well understood and accepted concept. There's no bad feelings. "We are competitors right now in this moment and everyone goes all in on that. I'm not cutting you a break. I definitely don't want you to cut me a break." Whoever-
Lauren Ruffin:
[crosstalk 00:23:05].
Laura Jorgensen:
No. Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
I want to be you when I grow up.
Laura Jorgensen:
What can I say? It sounds civilized but it's quite uncivilized during those 40 minutes, all bets are off. I do agree. Rivalry, I think fuels so much of it. I mean, I don't know about you Ruffin, but we definitely had some pretty legit rivalries all throughout my career, both coaching and playing and those games were lit. There was just a different atmosphere in the gym. There was definitely a different energy and I think rivalries sparks so much of progress even in business. Think about it, I mean who... Think of so much happens. Even when I worked corporately, so many of the decisions we make so many of them so asinine, we did because our competitors did. But that's the way it works because rivalry is real in my opinion. I mean, people feed off of it, make really bad decisions or really good ones because of it and it's all part of the deal.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oddly enough, I think that my probably most intense rivalry happened after college playing recreationally. There was a woman that I played with who... I love how you guys are smiling like, "What is she about to say?"
Laura Jorgensen:
Yeah, You nailed it.
Lauren Ruffin:
The rivalry was so intense that I wouldn't give her anything she wanted and we were supposed to be friendly. So we'd go out and have drinks afterwards and everything else, but no matter where we were off the court, even on the court, if she wanted to play four and four, I'd be like, "Oh well we only have 16 players so I'm going to go downstairs and work out." So they couldn't play four on four. I would just walk off the court. Everything that I did, I could not turn the rivalry off. I could name several other instances where I just went out of my way to put my finger in her eye just for fun. But good times. We ended up on the... We got so good that we ended up on the court during a mystics game. You know how they do the little fun activities. So they put the two of us out there with two little kids and we nearly... She ended up leading.
Tim Cynova:
The kid or your rival?
Lauren Ruffin:
My rival.
Tim Cynova:
Okay.
Lauren Ruffin:
So it was two adult women with two little kids doing a little layup drill, put on some pants or something random. I don't remember what it was, but somehow she hurt herself. I didn't do anything to her.
Laura Jorgensen:
I have a similar inability to turn the competition off. We went losing here in New Zealand and it's a downhill toboggan open course. Very little breaks or anything and they don't care so much about liability here. They're just like, "Here, go down in a skateboard helmet and see what happens." We were racing and my wife ran a 10 year old child over so she couldn't win. I mean, it was just like... It all goes out the window. There's blinders, right? Ruffin, there's just blinders on. "I'm here to win. That is what I'm here to do."
Lauren Ruffin:
I must win at all costs.
Laura Jorgensen:
I must win.
Lauren Ruffin:
Cassidy, our 12 year old, when she maybe three or four years ago, did girls on the run, a little 5K. It was mostly a 5K fun run. And she didn't want to run. So we were all the way in the back and I was like losing my mind. Imagine having to go 3.2 miles with someone who is apoplectic about being at the end. So she had to live through that. Poor thing. But at one point she's like, "I just want to have fun." And I'm like, "Winning is fun, kid. Losing is the worst. This is supposed to be fun."
Laura Jorgensen:
But how do you think that translates even in the workplace as well to now kids play games that there's no winner and they don't keep score even though... How does that shape society in the workplace and in sports? Is it okay that no one's a winner? We're not-
Lauren Ruffin:
I mean, I don't know. I read too much of Nietzsche who was a horrible person, but horrible person and he was onto something around competition. So I don't know. I always worry that I sound like the old curmudgeon around competitiveness and sort of the how you constantly push yourself for excellence in everything you do and I learned that as an athlete. I know people like, "Don't say 110%, there's only 100%." But there is a point in sport where you think your body is going to stop and then you keep going.
Laura Jorgensen:
Do you think that's just in sport? I'm going to have you pause on that.
Lauren Ruffin:
I was going to say... And I think I learned that in sport. I remember the first time I ever really lifted heavy... My aunt got really into weightlifting, but I was maybe 15 the first time I lifted with her and my arm stopped working. We lifted so heavy and so hard that I could not lift anymore and she was like, "That's okay. You just take your other arm and help this one up but you don't get to stop." I do feel like there is a certain mindset and a competitive drive to just not stop, that I don't know if it really... I don't see it very often anymore. I don't know what to do about that or how we change that. But it's connected to this idea that it's not important if you win and it's just fun.
Lauren Ruffin:
As a kid, how do you learn how it feels to win? To know that you are the best at something for that particular point in time? Not forever. Not that tomorrow you could be the loser and notice I didn't say second place finish. I said, "Loser." But I don't know. I don't know what to do with that. But I do think about a lot in the work context because there are points in time where we hear a lot of excuses about things. There are parts of me that miss being able to just run through obstacles over, under, through however you get there.
Laura Jorgensen:
However. Don't ask questions.
Lauren Ruffin:
Just do it.
Laura Jorgensen:
I think it's so funny because I feel like sport has always been a place and now it's becoming not that place anymore. It's always been a place where it's been okay to push yourself as hard as you can go. And other places, sometimes that's not so socially acceptable. I mean, you look at why investment banks only want to hire athletes. It's because the mindset, you've been drilled into this mindset that like you're saying, it's not that you're going over 100% but you've learned. Most people don't even go 80 they just think they're at 100. So you've learned how to get that extra bit, all of it out of yourself. I always wondered if that disappears from sport, where it's going to be socially acceptable to be able to still push yourself. In sport, even cycling, Tim, I find to be such a microcosm of life because you do these crazy hard training blocks and it's rest, recover. You've got to go hard to go easy.
Laura Jorgensen:
That's how I live my life. You've got to go hard to go easy. You've got to earn it, right? I'm not saying... Because I think some people, I can be intense for some people if you didn't know that. It's not that I don't go easy, it's just I go hard first and then that's where you find the balance. It's not that balance doesn't exist, but I don't find balance just living in the middle. I find balance and going full gas and then when the time is right letting off and I find that, that probably comes for me from sport, whether that be training for basketball or training for cycling, but that's something that I always wonder in the workplace what that looks like because we talk about work life balance, but what I think that's translated into is always living in the middle and people are afraid to push those limits because if you're pushing the limits, you're not balanced.
Laura Jorgensen:
This will be an argument and I'm sure people will refute what I'm saying, but in my mind that doesn't mean that you don't push the limits. It just means that you push them and then when it's time to stop pushing them, you can back off and take that break.
Tim Cynova:
Man, I think this is, as you both were talking about excellence and excellence in what you're doing. We see this a lot in the cultural sector with artists. I used to run a dance company. Highly trained performers, highly trained artists are pushing themselves to the edge and figuring out where that is so they can hold it right there. I used to play trombone, never got to the edge. I saw someone else get close, but similarly honing a craft over and over and over so that you're getting as close to perfect as you can and where you know where that and then you can translate that into other things if you want, but it's that ability to find out what excellent looks like, whatever that might be in yourself as well, and then dedicate yourself day in and day out to figuring out how to get there.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think I've talked about this article I read last year in business insider on... It was a parent writing about their kid trying out for the youth orchestra at Juilliard when he talked about how rewarding it was to watch his kid master something to play the same piece over and over and over again. To understand the nuance between it being really good and not so good, playing facing the accompanist and not facing just all the various ways that you really get good at something. What I struggle with as a manager in the workplace is, you don't understand what excellence looks like without critical immediate feedback. One of the things I've always loved about sport is whether it's from a coach or from a score or from your time or whatever, you immediately get really, really harsh raw feedback about your performance in a way that it can be really hard to do in the workplace.
Lauren Ruffin:
By that I mean my father was an avid basketball player and fan yelling at me during games about not being able to make a left handed layup. Just completely laying into me from the sidelines. I appreciated that feedback because one, it shamed me into doing better. Shame is a very important feeling for humans. But beyond that, the immediate feedback of missing a layup that's wide open in front of people and knowing that what you have to do the next day is go make 500 of them at different speeds, at different angles on the left side of the basket until you know that you can do it right, every time. It's very hard as a manager to tell another adult.
Lauren Ruffin:
You need to go back and write this paragraph 40 times until you get it right. Or this paragraph is absolutely terrible and I think that editors do that and that relationship. But if you're in an organization where you're managing people who are again juggling different things, that sort of harsh, critical, immediate feedback is really difficult to do and people aren't expecting to receive that in the workplace anymore.
Tim Cynova:
I wonder if this is where rivalries come into play, friendly rivalries. But people who force you to raise your game inside the workplace. I can think of a number of people that I currently work with. The two of you included. There's something about people who make you raise your game, who pushed back, who do it better than you do, who you're like, "I've got to level up because I can't coast off of what I used to be doing." I think that's one way that that shows up in the workplace because yeah, that gives you immediate feedback sometimes, but it's not at the end of the day, no one's flashing up a score. I'm sure there are companies where someone's flashing of a score, maybe sales.
Lauren Ruffin:
So the March Madness, basketball tournament season is upon us and the NCAA bracket announcement is imminent. Talk me through how you each prepare for this moment. How you fill out your brackets, maybe the best result you've ever received or achieved and what are some historical highlights?
Laura Jorgensen:
I got to share my secrets first?
Lauren Ruffin:
I don't have any secrets at all. I gave up doing a bracket that I really cared about 10 years ago. And so now I do one automated, I do one by my favorite colors of the moment. Which people always win using that crap when you're in the office pool. So I do a favorite color bracket type thing and then I do one that's kind of just based on gut intuition. But my best result ever was I picked Yukon to win the men's bracket. Was that like 2014 when they won? 2012 when Campbell Walker was on that team, they won the Maui invitational in the beginning of the season and I said they're going to win the whole thing this year. I called it right that year and I called it right in my bracket. I got a whole lot wrong in the bracket, but the thing I got right was that Yukon was going to win.
Laura Jorgensen:
Since I'm a data person, this is going to be a technical answer to this question. Because when I fill out a bracket, I fill it out to win. And it depends on the pool you're in because there's a lot of different methodologies for scoring. So there's some that it's this... It's simplistic, how many do you get right? And that you fill out a whole different way than a way that's like, "My favorite type is seed times round." And that should points for the round. Because say you pick a number 16 to win in the first round and you get 16 points, that's a big thing. So there's this weighting of underdog yet by the time you get to like eighth round, even if you pick the first seed, that's still a lot of points.
Laura Jorgensen:
So in that scenario, always pick the nine seed, because nine is worth more than eight and it's a 50-50 split of who's going to win that game. Every year there's a five, 12 upset, you got to pick one of those. Now it's getting even like four, 13s. So there's a lot of technical things that go to it, but I'd say I'm an emotional ticker cause I always want the underdog to win. So I pick by emotion and counter to what Ruffin says, I never go by who does well in the early season because none of that matters by tournament time and I go off momentum alone. So who's got the hot team at the moment? Who's rolling into the tournament with a lot of wins and who's going into it with a lot of confidence? Is usually how I pick. If it's a toss up, who's got the better coach always wins.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yes, I do look at seniority. Who's got an older roster? But it's going to get weird because the last couple of years you've got great players deciding to play overseas or just sitting out altogether for a year till they're eligible for the NBA. So I feel like parodies. I think this is the year we're going to see a 12, 13 seed get into the eight round. This year, there's a lot of parody happening, so it's going to be interesting. It's going to be actually really fricking stressful.
Laura Jorgensen:
It's going to be a great tournament. Going to your point. I think everything has changed since they made the 19 year old rule and there's teams that used to have one and dones don't anymore. Now a lot of teams that win it, they either have one superstar. You look at the Steph Curry or the Kawhi Leonard that took these teams all the way. So I'm looking at topping right now, and Dayton. But Dayton, they're not underrated though, is the problem. He's so good or like John Moran. How far did that team go? I think if you have one all star, it could take you-
Lauren Ruffin:
Or Collin Sexton a couple years ago with Alabama, it went way further than I thought with him.
Laura Jorgensen:
Such a toss up. Then you pick, you're like, "Am I putting all my chips on this one kid?" Maybe. And it's a big win or a big loss. I feel like it's always a gamble.
Lauren Ruffin:
On this child.
Laura Jorgensen:
To an 18 year old human.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh, this child.
Tim Cynova:
I went to the University of Cincinnati and before I went there everyone's like, "Bound to make final four at least once during your time there." It might've been my first year there where in the second round, Kenyon Martin broke his leg in the game and it was like poof, up in snow. And there's just a downward spiral. I don't know what they did there in the course of my time there, but they never made the final four.
Tim Cynova:
Selection Sunday is on Sunday. We're recording this on Tuesday. Selection Sunday if my Googling of terms is correct is on Sunday. So you two must already be doing research in the lead up for this because there's some conference tournaments that are happening. What does your prep look like for this?
Lauren Ruffin:
I haven't watched a lot of college ball this year. I've been pretty into the NBA this season because the NBA has been really interesting. So this week is my catch up on basketball. I guess I started last week before. I caught a couple of, San Diego State looks good. I feel like LJ who slacked about that a bit using the Slack for professional reasons only but so I'm catching up. So we'll see where I end up by the end of the week. And then match ups matter. We didn't say that, who they're playing matters. So I don't know if it's really worth it to get really neurotic about it before the brackets are done, before the brackets are kind of set.
Laura Jorgensen:
I agree with that. I think that the match-ups for sure have to fall to see who's playing who, because it makes all the difference in the world. Are you big and slow plane an agile team? Are you playing them in the first round or the sixth round and kind of like you were speaking about the injury there. One of the big things I look at is depth of bench. Because this is not one game, it's several and it's who's got the stamina to make it the whole way. So if there's a team that's got like three strong players, but once they go into their bench, they're in trouble, that is not a team that I pick far along the road. So it is a huge matchup thing. I don't do a ton of prep prior to the bracket being done because it's all just speculation at that stage. Just energy spent, energy spent. So I wait-
Lauren Ruffin:
And conference championships. Inevitably there's a team that would never get the tournament except that they randomly win their conference and then you're like, "What am I going to do now that Tougaloo College is in the tournament? What am I going to do with is?"
Laura Jorgensen:
I'm going to pick them because I just like the name Tougaloo.
Lauren Ruffin:
Apologies to all of our listeners who happened to have graduated from Tougaloo. Surely Thea Franklin who I went to law school with, went the Tougaloo it popped into my head. She's not listening for sure.
Tim Cynova:
All right, so as we close this episode, let's return to the title of the podcast, Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Do you have any more thoughts about how we can relate this topic that we've been spending the best hour on to work, not sucking?
Lauren Ruffin:
Well, I always go with team-manship. Everything I learned in life, and I know that sounds cliche and cheesy, but I really learned from playing basketball and basketball in particular, unlike all the other sports, I played. Soccer, too many people on the field, field's too big. But basketball in particular, having five people on the court in relatively close quarters, it's a dance. When it works, when you understand your team, you have good chemistry, there's nothing better than playing a game with people you like and people you play well with. And conversely, playing with someone who doesn't know the game, and I don't mean from a technical... Technically you play with people of different skill levels, that's inevitable. But playing with someone who just at a philosophical level you really dislike playing with is painful.
Lauren Ruffin:
You can tell a lot about a person from their game. I think that's particularly true with women's sports because the level of technical skill in women's basketball, it's a really pure form of the game. So yeah, I've hired people based on how they played on the court. I hired one of my favorite point guards to play with, to run communications for an organization and she ran the communication shop exactly like she ran the game as a point guard and it was fantastic to watch. So I think it matters.
Laura Jorgensen:
Yeah, I have to second that. I do say so much of this does relate. I mean, just talking about how I pick my bracket and how teams work. I think good teams, so much of it starts at the top down, so it's like where's the leadership at? How is the coach bringing people into the program? It starts at the whole recruiting phase, which I think it does an organization as well. Who are we bringing in? What is the style, what is the mission base of this? And that filters down. That starts at one level of leadership and it goes right down to your team captain who then filters it down to the rest of the team. I think successful organizations work that way as well. There's a common goal that we all have. We all know what it is. It's filtered down through every single person and every single person buys in.
Laura Jorgensen:
It's not like one person doesn't buy into what the strategy is. Nope. It just won't work. I think it's the same in an organization. And once you get people behind that common goal, magic can happen. And that's what happens in the tournament, is that everyone's bought into this thing and they say, "This is our goal. We're going to win the tournament. It doesn't matter if you're 16 seed or one seed, and that is what we're going full force in." That's where you see the magic happen. I think in organizations as well, it doesn't matter if its sport, it doesn't matter if it's business, it doesn't matter if it's dance. When you have a group of people that all say, "Look, I'm putting my blinders on. This is what we're doing and nothing's going to stop us." Amazing, amazing things that shouldn't happen can happen.
Laura Jorgensen:
That's the magic of March Madness. It's the magic of these startups that are in a garage that all of a sudden are these massive organizations. It's because they don't actually care about what's logical, what should be happening. There's a common goal that they all have that they just go all in on and it's beautiful and I think it's beautiful to see in sport. It's beautiful to see in business across all things.
Laura Jorgensen:
So I think teams and leadership are the key to all of it and this common goal that everyone gets behind and goes after. Teams that win the tournament have all sorts of obstacles in their way, just like businesses do. But they're the teams that don't get derailed. There's a lot of teams that they go in, "Hurrah, we're going to win this thing." And it's all great, and then they get one guy in foul trouble and they start to crumble. It's the people that are resilient and can kind of smart these curve balls that really are standing at the end of the thing. That's true in business and in sport.
Tim Cynova:
Lauren and LJ, it's always a pleasure spending time with you. My best wishes to both of you as you enter this college basketball playoff season. Thanks for being on the podcast.
Lauren Ruffin:
Thanks. Really looking forward to the Fractured Atlas pool, with just the two of us.
Laura Jorgensen:
Going to get a top two. I know it.
Tim Cynova:
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