As a lifelong fan of Detroit sports, the Bad Boys definitely top my list of favorite teams. The Detroit Pistons picked up the Bad Boys nickname during the 1988-1989 season because of their aggressive play and confident swagger. By the time the Eastern Conference Finals came around, the media seemed to be selling two choices: the finesse of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls or the grit of the Bad Boys from Detroit.
The Bad Boys had plenty of depth on their roster, but the Bulls had a superstar in Michael Jordan. After three games, the Bad Boys were losing the series and feeling the pressure of a #1 seed coming up short. Their solution? The Jordan Rules. The concept was relatively simple: If someone was going to end their quest for a championship, it would have to be one of Jordan’s supporting cast members. Jordan was an amazing talent and posed unique problems for Detroit—they needed a customized solution.
The actual Jordan Rules—switching defensive looks and playing him more physically—didn’t matter as much as the philosophy behind it. They encountered a new problem with Jordan and needed a new solution. The old way wasn’t working. They needed to be innovative and they needed to do it now.
Many schools are under similar time-sensitive pressures and have identified problems that are unique to their own context. What if we unleashed the Jordan Rules in our schools?
Here’s the game plan:
1) Identify the target
Who is your school’s Jordan? After working in high schools for the last ten years, I have often wished for the Freshmen Rules. Our challenges with freshmen rarely mirrored the challenges we experienced with other grade levels. Begin by identifying a single, tangible target within your school. Once you have identified a sub-population of students, you will be able to more directly address the challenge.
2) Let go of the past
This might be the hardest step of all. Let’s return to the Bad Boys for a moment—they were a highly successful organization. Prior to their struggles with Jordan, they won 63 regular season games, finished first in their division, and carried a #1 seed into the playoffs. The Bulls were still widely considered an up-and-coming team, a lowly #6 seed. It would have been easy for the Bad Boys to simply rely on the same strategies that they used all season long.
Let go of the way you previously responded to the target. If your goal is really improved student learning, you can’t do what you’ve always done year after year. Any measure of improvement requires innovation and action.
3) Answer the “what if?” questions
Any strategy needs to be deliberate enough to respond to more than one situation. The Bad Boys played out several scenarios, including those that resulted from a failed initial plan. (What if Jordan split the double team and made it into the lane? Hard foul.) The planning is key. There is no way that the Jordan Rules could have been implemented without deliberate planning that included the players. In short, your new classroom routine isn’t going to work if you announce it in frustration as a lesson plan is failing. School policies created in isolation and rolled out to teachers during in-service week won’t yield much benefit. Take the time to develop a complete strategy—and include the relevant personnel--before rolling it out.
4) Return to the long-term goal
Talk about the new strategy in the context of the larger goal. The Jordan Rules were needed so that the Bad Boys would achieve their goal of getting to the NBA Finals and winning a championship. While long-term goals in sports can be rather obvious (winning a championship), we don’t often talk about school goals this way (what does your school expect to achieve this year?). As a result, sometimes new initiatives are evaluated in ways that become artificial because they are removed from their initial purpose. If a new course is developed to offer students a new skill, evaluating homework submission rates is not the best way to determine if students have acquired the new skill. Your purpose and larger vision should drive all of your practices.
More than anything else, the Jordan Rules remind us of the danger in a one-size-fits-all approach. Still, there’s a charming revelation to this sports story that is often overlooked: The Bad Boys became champions only after they found the humility to change.