Building Great Chemistry. Without great team chemistry, it’s so hard to succeed in sports or business.
In the 2014 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors had all the talent in the world, but something was off. Despite boasting elite shooters like Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, the Warriors flamed out in the playoffs. The roster looked great on paper. Incredible talent, but the team wasn’t executing when it mattered most. That team chemistry? Fragile. The team’s internal alignment was off—competing egos, unclear roles, and leadership friction.
Then came a team transformation which flipped the culture, clarified roles, rebuilt trust and aligned aim, resulting in the creation of a sports dynasty. In 2015, Coach Steve Kerr took over and introduced more than a new playbook. The former star NBA guard didn’t just introduce a new playbook for his players. He rebuilt trust, clarified roles, and re-centered the team around a shared purpose: unselfish play. It’s said that when you “believe” in something, you’re usually right: if you don’t believe you can accomplish something, you’re usually right, and when you believe, your positive attitude can carry you to new heights.
The result of the new attitude injected by Kerr: a 67-win season and the Warrior’s first championship in 40 years.
In sports, the transformation of a team from “worst-to-first” always involves a mental change. As the classic America song reminds us, “Oz didn’t give the Tin Man anything he didn’t already have!” (FN1) Football Coach Dan Campbell of the Detroit Lions may be today’s NFL Wizard of Oz. When Campbell took over as head coach in 2021, the Lions were known more for heartbreak than heroics. But Campbell brought more than grit and memorable press conferences. He instilled belief in his young team. He rewired a losing culture by demanding effort, modeling accountability, and building fierce loyalty among players who had grown used to disappointment. He didn’t start with superstars; he started with trust and identity. Slowly, the team began to play for each other—not just for stats or contracts. At the apex of the 2023 season, the Lions reached the NFC Championship for the first time in over three decades. The spark? A shared mindset. Campbell gave the team permission to believe again—and belief, paired with effort, changed everything.
💡 Talent isn’t enough. Alignment turns potential into performance.
Similar Principles Apply in Other Walks of Life. The same principle applies off the sports field.
In 2017, Uber hit a wall. Its culture started to rot. Internal conflict. Leadership churn. A culture crisis that nearly brought the company down. Many outsiders wondered whether the company was in free fall.
Behind the scenes, Uber did what the Warriors had done: it realigned. The leadership team came back to the table, rebuilt trust, and made culture a strategic priority. It wasn’t just about surviving—it was about transforming the culture.
Most executive teams don’t realize how close they are to dysfunction. A recent survey found that while many executives believe they’re aligned, only 18% strongly agree their teams behave so. (FN2)
That’s not just a communication gap. It’s a strategic risk!
Getting chemistry right isn’t a soft requirement. It’s foundational. High-performance teams require it to function well under pressure, adapt to adversity and win when it counts, irrespective of whether these teams are playing a championship match or working towards hitting the next business milestone.
💡 Culture isn't a side dish. It’s survival fuel.
Quiet Poison: Misalignment Kills. Alignment failures don’t always explode. They often erode silently, slowly and fatally. Let’s consider a few leading case studies on this topic.
BlackBerry – The Risk of Ignoring Dissent. At its peak, BlackBerry controlled more than 50% of the U.S. smartphone market. Internal product teams weren’t complacent; indeed, they were warning leadership that the iPhone’s touchscreen interface posed a real threat. The executive team stayed focused on Blackberry’s enterprise clients, dismissing shifts in consumer demand. “Employees were often reluctant to challenge senior management... the top brass was convinced their keyboard-centric device was unassailable.” (FN3)
(McNish & Silcoff, 2015). Less than a decade later, BlackBerry’s market share dropped below 1%!
💡 Work teams require empowerment to make changes. In the case of Blackberry, its leadership team’s dismissal of internal voices warning about touchscreen disruption and the lack of empowered work teams stalled innovation. The result? The inevitability of the iPhone takeover.
WeWork – Loyalty Over Accountability. The founder of WeWork, Adam Neumann, was surrounded by a loud echo chamber of loyalists unwilling to openly question his visions, and the company reportedly operated with few checks and balances. There was a significant amount of hype around WeWork’s culture, but its lack of operational discipline had undercut its ability to turn a vision into reality. “Neumann had created a leadership team of sycophants… no one challenged him.” (FN4) Once a darling of the private markets, this unicorn’s valuation underwent a reckoning, falling from $47B to approximately $8B after its IPO collapsed.
💡 Charisma without accountability is not a strategy for sustainable success. At WeWork, the lack of strong governance and refusal to confront financial realities triggered a dramatic collapse in valuation. It stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when culture is treated as an afterthought instead of a cornerstone.
Nokia – Siloed Leadership, Paralyzed Execution. Even though Nokia engineers had early prototypes of touchscreen smartphones, management was split. Internal teams were siloed, and political infighting stifled execution. Leadership underestimated the iPhone’s threat and overestimated their own ecosystem. “Nokia was riddled with organizational complexity… even when the right people knew what to do, the system wouldn’t let them act.” (FN5) In 2014, Nokia sold its mobile division to Microsoft.
💡 Misalignment between leadership and those designing and engineering products is potentially catastrophic. At Nokia, executives didn’t embrace red flags raised by their product teams and the company couldn’t overcome fragmented decision-making framework. When misalignment feels like delay, it’s likely decay.
Tension Is Fine—But Only When It’s Anchored in Shared Vision. Friction isn't the enemy to business progress. In fact, the best teams expect tension. It’s a byproduct of passion, diverse thinking, and high standards. But here’s the catch: without a shared mission, tension fractures. With it, tension forges progress.
Let’s consider a handful of iconic companies underscoring the importance of this point.
📽 Pixar – Creative Tension, Structured Feedback. In its startup days, Pixar directors and tech leads often clashed. Instead of suppressing creative conflict, Pixar institutionalized it. Their “Braintrust” meetings created a structured environment for candid feedback—radical candor without ego. Ed Catmull believed in disagreement—not as dysfunction, but as a sign that people cared deeply about the product.
The shared vision? Tell great stories. That clarity turned tension into creative breakthroughs. (FN6)
💵 PayPal – Chaos with a Compass. The “PayPal Mafia” didn’t agree on much—but they did agree on one thing: building the future of money. Fierce debates were commonplace. Roles shifted. Founders argued. However, given the shared vision, this chaos became productive. Insider Peter Thiel described it like this, “We were less smoothly functioning… but people felt ownership. They raised their voices when things were off track.” (FN7). At PayPal, the leadership team’s alignment wasn’t about achieving harmony. It boiled down to their shared belief in their mission.
📺 Netflix – Freedom, Responsibility, and Clarity. When building his startup, Reed Hastings designed a culture where employees had freedom coupled with accountability. Empowered teams made bold calls without asking permission, but they knew that these calls must align with the leadership team’s strategic vision: innovate relentlessly, put the customer first, and never cling to past success. Such cultural clarity freed Netflix to successfully reinvent itself through several risky business transformations - first with introducing DVDs by mail, then streaming, and finally creating original content. (FN8)
📦 Amazon – Tension Managed by Decision Type. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, embraced friction too—but he paired it with frameworks. Bezos conceived of the “one-way vs. two-way door” model, enabling team flexibility in achieving Amazon’s customer-centric solution:
One-way door: irreversible (strategic) decisions, such as acquisitions, demand consensus.
Two-way door: reversible calls, such as process tweaks, should be made fast—even amid disagreement.
Autonomous teams had authority. That ability to move forward quickly was coupled with alignment with Amazon’s customer-centric goals, a North Star which kept experimentation from turning into chaos. (FN9)
💡 Key Takeaways for Business Leaders.
Tension reveals cracks—or strengthens steel.
The difference? A clear, shared mission.
Misalignment turns every disagreement into a threat.
Alignment transforms it into progress.
High-functioning teams don’t form by accident. They’re forged—through clarity of purpose, constructive tension, and a culture that rewards the courage to challenge assumptions, not one that clings to “because we’ve always done it that way.”
Great chemistry is your hidden engine—on the basketball court, inside a startup garage, and in the corridors of a corporate boardroom.
Don’t ignore the friction. Lean into it with mutual respect, shared goals, and agreed-upon principles. Do so successfully, and you can achieve rare air – a sustainable team driving your organization into the future.
© 2025. The Savvy Startup Advisor, LLC. All rights reserved.
About the Author: Kevin R. Davis is a 2x General Counsel who offers business stakeholders strategic guidance aimed at optimizing their operations, including implementing lean legal systems, improving risk management processes, undertaking business transformations, fundraising, engaging in strategic planning and handling exits. Kevin publishes a weekly newsletter, The Savvy Startup Advisor™, which provides guidance for startup success. Earlier in his career, Kevin worked as a corporate attorney with Kirkland & Ellis, LLP and as a legal executive of Publicis Groupe. Kevin is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law and Northwestern University.
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Nothing contained in this article should be construed as legal or investment advice. This article does not create an attorney-client relationship between any reader and its author. Neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for updating this publication to consider any changes in applicable laws. Nothing in this article is based upon the author or publisher’s experience with any specific individual or organization; any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental. If legal advice or other professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
References
FN1/ America. “Tin Man.” Holiday, Warner Bros. Records, 1974.
FN2/ Gino, F. (2021, May 5). This is the hidden crisis in leadership teams. Fast Company https://www.fastcompany.com/91316866/this-is-the-hidden-crisis-in-leadership-teams.
FN3 / McNish, J., & Silcoff, S. (2015). Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry. Flatiron Books.
FN4 / Brown, E. (2020). The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion. Crown Publishing Group.
FN 5/ Doz, Y. L., & Wilson, K. (2017). Ringtone: Exploring the Rise and Fall of Nokia in Mobile Phones. Oxford University Press.
FN 6/ Catmull, E., & Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. Random House.
FN 7 / Thiel, P. (2023, May 5). Peter Thiel on how the PayPal team didn't get along—and why that's good. Startup Archive.
https://twitter.com/StartupArchive_/status/1920810549287256502
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FN 8 / Hastings, R., & Meyer, E. (2020). No rules rules: Netflix and the culture of reinvention. Penguin Press.
FN 9 / Bezos, J. (2015). 2015 Letter to Shareholders. Amazon.com. https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/annual/2015-Letter-to-Shareholders.PDF; Bezos, J. (2016). 2016 Letter to Shareholders. Amazon.com. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholders.
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