Issue 724 - "John Wooden, Jeff Bezos and Berry Gordy: Collaboration at Its Best"


Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13	Issue 724
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"JOHN WOODEN, JEFF BEZOS AND BERRY GORDY: COLLABORATION AT ITS BEST" John Wooden Video Clip (56 sec.): Coach Wooden is asked: "What is your greatest responsibility as a coach?" We’ve studied how Coach Wooden ran practices, and how Jeff Bezos built Prime. There’s another world-class operation worth putting under the same microscope: Motown—Berry Gordy’s "Hitsville U.S.A." Why Motown? Because the results were staggering. Between 1961 and 1971 Motown racked up 110 Top 10 hits, an industrial output of creativity that almost defies belief. Across Gordy’s ownership era (1959–1988), Motown tallied roughly 53 U.S. Billboard Hot 100 #1 singles, with artists like the Supremes, the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye carrying the sound of young America to the top of the charts. Coach Wooden, Jeff Bezos, and Barry Gordy shared a common operating system. They each built structures that required dissent, made debate normal, and removed personal blame from honest disagreement. In our framework, that’s Level Seven Collaboration. Inside Motown’s Quality Control Meetings Berry Gordy adapted an idea from his time on Ford’s assembly line and reinvented it for art: every Friday at 9 a.m., Motown held their Quality Control Meeting—a standing, high-stakes session where producers, writers, promotion, and even non-creative staff crowded in to argue and decide which records should be released. People fought for their songs, poked holes in others, and—crucially—voted. Gordy had one cultural non-negotiable: "freedom to express honest opinions…without fear of reprisal." He was serious—if he smelled payback for a vote, the "reprisalor" was in trouble. There was structured dissent with no recrimination. People could disagree openly because the system guaranteed fair rules and protection for candor. Motown didn’t "hope" collaboration would happen; it scheduled it, refereed it, and protected it. Quality Control wasn’t just a meeting—it was a repeatable mechanism that: Demanded input from across the house (not just the "stars"). Normalized debate and hard questions about market reality. Coach Wooden sought assistants who would disagree respectfully and required them to bring ideas, then made the final call and moved on without blame. (Level 5→7 behavior in our model.) Jeff Bezos describes "team inventing": someone proposes, others improve, others object, the group solves the objections—with humility, risk-taking, and no recrimination for failed experiments. (Prime’s origin story is a case study in Level 6→7.) Berry Gordy institutionalized the same pattern in Quality Control—rules, debate, votes, and no reprisals—and turned it into a hit-making machine. All three men used the same leadership math: structure + candor + non-recrimination = repeatable excellence. The Coach Wooden, Jeff Bezos. Berry Gordy lessons for any team—sports, tech, healthcare, and education are: Put collaboration on the calendar. Set rules that keep it fair. Protect dissent—explicitly—from reprisal. Decide, ship, learn, repeat. That’s how a factory of hits stays a factory of hits. And that’s how Level Seven collaboration moves from a feel-good notion to an operating advantage. What’s your operating advantage? Click here for personal development exercise: Issue 724. Click here for Printable Poetry: Issue 724. Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman www.woodenswisdom.com Follow @woodenswisdom	COACH'S FAVORITE POETRY AND PROSE Success This I would claim for my success—not fame nor gold, Nor the throng's changing cheers from day to day, Not always ease and fortune's glad display, Though all of these are pleasant joys to hold; But I would like to have my story told By smiling friends with whom I've shared the way, Who, thinking of me, nod their heads and say: 'His heart was warm when other hearts were cold. 'None turned to him for aid and found it not, His eyes were never blind to man's distress, Youth and old age he lived, nor once forgot The anguish and the ache of loneliness; His name was free from stain or shameful blot And in his friendship men found happiness.' Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)
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Issue 724 - "John Wooden, Jeff Bezos and Berry Gordy: Collaboration at Its Best"

Inside Motown’s Quality Control Meetings