Cavaliers’ owner Dan Gilbert speaks to the team – Ohio State Buckeyes
4/22/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
April 22, 2015
COLUMBUS, Ohio – You know what’s the best part of the Cleveland Cavaliers being up two-games-to-none in their best-of-seven NBA playoff series with the Boston Celtics? It’s the chance to go up three-games-to-none.
Cavaliers’ team owner Dan Gilbert didn’t come into Real Life Wednesday’s at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center today with that thought in mind, but he appreciated hearing it from coach Urban Meyer and the team before he spent close to an hour addressing the Buckeyes.
Comfortably attired in a brown pullover sweater and jeans, Gilbert used an interactive power point presentation to describe to the team the culture that makes his family of companies and employees successful.
Gilbert said there was no secret sauce that makes his organizations successful, but that the ingredients were similar across the board: culture, environment and philosophy. Specifically, Gilbert said of his companies:
- Culture drives the decision-making behavior and once indoctrinated into the culture, the decisions and behavior will make sense and business will be “off to the races.”
- He encourages his employees to find a better way, and said they are “obsessed with finding a better way.” To this end, he challenges and encourages his employees to look at the world differently in order to add value and to add something different or unique.
- He said you have to “take the roast out of the oven,” meaning make a decision whether it is right or wrong. Learn from mistakes but don’t procrastinate out of fear. He says failure is an option and then played this quote: “I’ve failed over and over again and that’s why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan
Don’t get married to the status quo, he said. Make sure anydefault setting for focus and awareness is never status no, statusslow or status dough, but rather it’s set to status grow, statusknow and status go, which will all lead to status “whoa!” The mostsuccessful organizations, according to Gilbert, use technology andinformation to make changes, and they aren’t stuck in the statusquo. He says to prioritize. Then re-prioritize. Then re-prioritize.Again. Again. And again. And finally, Gilbert said he loves peopleand that people are what make a business, so he wants individualswho are “lit up.” He wants people who have a fire … a passion …a motor. He wants people who are obsessed about finding a betterway, who are creative, who aren’t afraid to fail, are focused andwho listen.
The Buckeyes were listening … and taking notes. Gilbert, after all, is not only owner of the Cavs, but he is chairman and founder of Rock Ventures and Quicken Loans Inc., which together have more than 100 companies under their umbrella. He provided the team his email address and gave each player a copy of his company’s “Isms in Action” manual.
Another contact and another Real Life Wednesday is in the books.
