Here comes the WARRIORS pre-season! Or, what I learned as a female technology manager from my temporary, involuntary obsession with professional basketball.

It started out slowly.... innocently enough... arriving home to Oakland, after a long work day in Mountain View, sitting on the couch while my daughter cheered on the Golden State Warriors mid-season with a friend.  The next deceptively simple step was to attend a game in person, on Easter Sunday with our good friends Terry and Katie - incredibly fun, including selfies, beer, food, cheering Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson on to the Warriors epic win record of 73 games, watching in awe as Klay made basket after basket from "downtown", then "waaaaay downtown".  (I can say that now).  The learning curve of writing "Clay" instead of "Klay" and getting smacked for that on Facebook.

*After that things really picked up steam.  After seeing my Facebook posts people at work started talking to me about sports, not just basketball but hockey, skiing, snowboarding, whatever, any sport.  I was suddenly "sporty".

Without knowing it, or even trying, I had tapped into the lively and fierce world of competitive sports, achievement, tracking wins, tracking mileage, and much much more.  Not just men were talking to me, women too.. chatting with me in the hallways, at the water cooler, on my way out the door.  "Go Warriors!" or "Let me know how the snow is in Tahoe! We're skiing next weekend!"  

#randomsportcrossovermoment.

I learned that on my engineering team,  people were taking time off to stay home and watch soccer on TV from Europe.  WFH day when big soccer games were on for the Euro's on the payroll! 

So the weird part was that not only was I having conversations with people I'd never really connected with before, I started noticing my own language was changing.

Using sports metaphors, fist bumps, saying "S'up?" without even realizing it.  Calling LeBron a sissy.  Wow, where did THAT come from?  Who even WAS LeBron?
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I think what really kicked things over the edge for me was meeting Klay Thompson in person with my daughter in Montclair at the pizza joint down the street.  After that, things would never be the same.  Ever.  Not ever.  

 Not only was I a full blown fan, I was an obsessed fan.

To say that my life took a new direction might be over-stating things, might....  The season ended on an historically crappy note.  We lost.  We actually lost.  *WE* lost.  Like I felt that way - I was part of a We.  That was new.  And, OK, Klay does live less than a mile from my house.  So I guess that makes me part of a We right?

However, there were some deeper reasons that last season mattered and why this blog post is about basketball.  

It's important to capture why the temporary madness of sports became relevant to me, a female technical manager slogging away in Silicon Valley every day.  A woman in a man's world, a female engineering manager in the male dominated world of JAVA, JSON and JIRA. For a short period of time, I was on the team, part of the competitive, rough, nasty, fun, boisterous rollicking world of celebrating wins and laughing at losses.  Not just in a private way, but in a big, loud, bold and public way. Like the guys are.

That's the gist of it.  I was on the team.  The guy's team.  And I learned something about how guys think about things, about business, about competition.  OK, not just guys, but for this blog post I'm gonna say guys....Sorry gals.  Just this once...

Play sports in public and there's no place to hide folks, fail and it's waaaay out there.  We laugh, talk, analyze and review every twist and turn.  Was Steph weak?  Injured?  What's wrong with Klay's wrist?  Who was drunk in Oakland last night and caught on an iPhone?  

I've been working in animation, media, Hollywood and technology for over 25 years.  The last time I was part of a catastrophic failure was when the 747 I was installing cameras on for NASA caught fire on the tarmac and exploded.  I was already heading to my family in Yuba City for Christmas when the engine blew and my scientific  team evacuated.  We lost millions of dollars in computing and optical equipment that day - the jet burning out of control on the runway at AMES for over 3 hours until the fuel burned off.  No one was hurt in that accident but we made the front page of the newspapers.  I had been scheduled to be on that plane but at the last minute chose to go see my Dad in Yuba.  After that, I left NASA to work in film in San Francisco.  

Since that time I've worked in successful organizations, where competition was fierce and achievement paramount.  Working for luminaries like Doug Trumbull, Francis Ford Coppola, Steve Jobs, celebration of failure, getting ripped apart in the media, wasn't really something we would look forward to.  Along the way the pressures of life, the need to earn a living and support my daughter on my own gave way to a craving for safety and security, playing it safe in order to provide a secure future for her.  All good goals, but along the way this subtle and then not so subtle preference for security and safety started to erode that a core feeling I had growing up, flying down the mountain on skis or sailing with my Dad that life was really exciting - that life is meant to be exciting, thrilling and challenging.

It's not that I lost my intellectual edge, became particularly boring or reluctant in any way that people would notice.  I've always been very high energy.  It was an internal shift, a subtle erosion of excitement, eventually a nagging fear that it would be much better not to be noticed, not to make waves, to do the safe thing to slowly and tiny bit by tiny bit get quieter, smaller and less interesting.  

Working for large firms can produce this same flagging of spirit.  Vibrancy, risk taking in an established firm isn't encouraged.  Failing big time isn't encouraged. Firms allow themselves to be come stagnant, discourage innovation and often take the safe path.  That makes a huge amount of sense for many firms.

Likewise, losing the season in a spectacular flame out this spring isn't something Warriors fans enjoyed.  It was shocking, disappointing and sort ridiculous to lose in the last 10 seconds of the game.  No one likes that.  Except, I did - well, I sort of did.  What I adored was the way people seemed to come out of the corners of the office to comment on, relish and participate in the public drama of it all.  Suddenly I was having conversations with people I had never met.  On the street, in the store, in the office.  

I loved watching big personalities fail way out in front in some sort of crazy fearless way.  I loved listening to the radio sport casters who didn't really know anything but who had huge opinions.  It was all kind of crazy and energetic.

Most of all I loved connecting with people I had never met, roughing it up and laughing and joking and crying together.  It made me wonder what life would be like with more of that - A LOT more.

In business, if everyone was actually on the team.  Not just hanging out, or playing some assigned role.  But in a big messy, scary, creative way, really engaged.

So this is what I'm thinking about as PRE-SEASON rolls around!  Yay baby!  What's it gonna be?  Are we playing safe?  Or, are we on the team, clawing our way towards epic success and epic failures?  Key word epic.  

The other day I discovered Terry bought us tickets to the pre-season game in early November!!

As a manager I have the power to encourage everyone to get excited, move towards the center of the conversation, come out of the shadows, change it up, mess it up, move things towards a more vibrant, engaged and collaborative culture.  That's what I took away from my seasonal basketball obsession.  Make it real folks, take a risk, get crazy, get in the game.  It's scary, messy, loud and you might get hurt.  But you might just have an epic game and laugh about it long and loud, way out front.