While watching the NBA Finals last night (Go Knicks), I started thinking about the similarities between your workplace and a professional sports franchise.
That thought led me down a rabbit hole of company culture, leadership, performance, and all the things organizations love to celebrate about themselves.
Every organization has a scoreboard, and every organization has trophies they like to point to when they’re winning.
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You’ve seen the lists before. Best Places to Work. Top Company Culture. Best Employer for Parents. Fastest Growing Workplace. Every year, another logo gets added to the careers page, another trophy gets placed in the lobby, and another LinkedIn post celebrates the achievement.
Those awards matter. Great cultures don’t happen by accident. They require thoughtful leadership, intentional hiring, clear values, and a genuine investment in people. Some organizations deserve every bit of recognition they receive.
What has always made me chuckle, however, is when a company follows that celebration by saying, “We’re like a family here.”
I’ve never bought into that phrase.
Families don’t put people on performance plans.
Families don’t eliminate positions because earnings missed expectations.
Families don’t call everyone into a meeting and announce that 10% of the household is being let go.
Families don’t replace one sibling with another because the new one has more experience and costs less.
The truth is that most companies are not families. They’re sports franchises.
To be fair, I understand why companies use the family analogy.
Most leaders mean well when they say it. They want people to feel connected. They want employees to care about one another. They want a culture where people feel supported and valued.
The problem isn’t the intention. The problem is the metaphor.
That doesn’t mean sports franchises are bad. In fact, some of the best organizations I’ve ever worked for operated exactly this way. They were transparent about expectations, obsessed with performance, committed to winning, and willing to make difficult decisions when necessary.
A sports franchise has one primary objective: to win.
Winning may mean revenue growth. It may mean market share. It may mean profitability, innovation, customer retention, or shareholder value. Whatever the scoreboard happens to be, the organization exists to improve the number on it.
Every decision gets filtered through that lens.
A sports franchise signs free agents even when they already have someone playing the position. A company hires a new executive even though a talented internal candidate was hoping for the promotion.
A sports franchise trades aging veterans when their performance declines. A company restructures teams when skill sets no longer match the direction of the business.
A sports franchise rebuilds the roster after a disappointing season. A company reorganizes after a tough year and calls it a transformation initiative.
Corporate America just uses different uniforms and press releases.
Most employees understand this intellectually, but many still struggle emotionally when they experience it firsthand.
The salesperson who exceeded quota for five straight years is shocked when leadership questions a bad quarter. The manager who helped build a department feels blindsided when a reorganization changes their role. The executive who sacrificed weekends and vacations for years can’t believe they’re being let go.
Those reactions are understandable.
The mistake is assuming loyalty and performance create permanent job security.
They don’t.
Every professional athlete eventually learns the same lesson: nobody gets to play today’s game based on yesterday’s stats.
The same lesson applies in business.
This doesn’t mean people shouldn’t care about their coworkers. Some of my closest friendships came from people I met at work. I’ve celebrated weddings with former colleagues, attended funerals, vacationed with coworkers, and stayed connected to people years after leaving an organization.
Those relationships are real.
The company itself is different.
Companies have goals. Companies have budgets. Companies have shareholders, investors, owners, boards, and expectations. When circumstances change, companies make decisions in the best interest of the organization, just as sports franchises make decisions in the best interest of the team.
Understanding that reality doesn’t make you cynical.
It makes you prepared.
You stop expecting your employer to provide unconditional loyalty. You start taking ownership of your own career. You invest in your network. You continue learning. You build skills that travel with you. You recognize that your career belongs to you, not the logo on your business card.
That’s why I never tell people to look for a family at work.
Look for great leaders. Look for teammates you respect. Look for opportunities to learn. Look for a mission you believe in. Look for a place that gives you a chance to win.
Just don’t confuse the jersey for the family.
Championship teams make roster moves, while families always save you a seat at the table, no matter how bad your quarter was.