Beyond X's and O's: Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes — Kelly Amonte Hiller and the Northwestern Wildcats

This piece first appeared at InsisdeLacrosse.com on November 21, 2010, and can be accessed at the following URL:

http://insidelacrosse.com/news/2010/11/21/beyond-xs-and-os-ch-ch-ch-changes-—-kelly-amonte-hiller-and-northwestern-wildcats

From Chicago comes change. Jazz, the mafia, pizza – they all went to Chicago as one thing, and came out another. Whipped around and reinvented, they grew, evolved, historically altered. While many may snicker, dismiss or sneer, like those before it, women’s lacrosse migrated to Chicago and emerged something different. Whatever your thoughts of Kelly Amonte Hiller – aggressive or aloof, inventive or disruptive – she’s changed the game of lacrosse and there’s no going back. The dynamic individual and team styles of defense, the coordinated and inventive looks on offense, the less-than traditional players who rose to the ranks of superstardom all exemplify the many tweaks Amonte Hiller and company have been making on the banks of Lake Michigan.

The Difference

At first pass, Kelly Amonte Hiller could be confused for a coaching cliché, dropping lines like “there are consequences for cutting corners”, “we need to stay true to our roots”, and “it’s the little things that we do on a daily basis”. Even suggesting that what goes on at Northwestern isn’t any different than anywhere else, that they’re just another team. But as we know, they’re not just another team and she’s not just another coach. Northwestern has won five consecutive NCAA championships, six-straight conference championships, produced tons of individual award winners (Tewaaraton Awards, All American plaques, you name it), claims the best NCAA tournament winning percentage (78.1%) in history, and it’s easy to go on. The Wildcats of Northwestern have dominated the last decade, and they may be just warming up.

Problem Solving

In looking deeper at Amonte Hiller and her staff, the distance they’ve gained from other programs may be a result of how they’ve approached the game. Like all the top tier teams, the Wildcats work hard, but it’s where they work hard that makes Northwestern somewhat unique. They’re tireless in assessing themselves, their squad, and the best way to be competitive. In talking with her about this, Amonte Hiller shows a glimmer of the plotting tactician she’s come to be known as. “Coming up with new ideas is the key for us,” she says, lending insight into the brainstorming sessions that must regularly take place in her offices. They look to other sports, other success stories, mining from boxing, ultimate fighting, hockey, football and basketball, and then adapting it to work for them. This fall the players have been boxing once a week because Amonte Hiller believes that “it’s so much about the mental game”, and when you’re stronger as an individual, you’re stronger as a team.

“I have a great staff in place . . . good idea people,” she assures. And they have to be to keep up with the signature of Northwestern teams. They’re out of the box, creative, and they’ve looked at lacrosse the way strategists look at broader issues, large-scale problems. They’re not solely focused on what others have done to succeed, they’re also concentrating on what has to be done to achieve moving forward. It may seem like a slight, even insignificant difference, but it’s the difference between winning and losing, leading and following. Northwestern finds new ways to win, drawing on history and convention just as liberally as they pull from football or ice hockey. They’re not just coaching and playing, they’re solving problems that need different perspectives, varying streams of information in order to be solved.

Legacy

In looking at Northwestern’s resume of recent success, 2010 is an outlier. In the five previous years, Amonte Hiller’s squads ended their seasons with NCAA trophies. In 2010, they lost in the championship game. For Amonte Hiller, there seems to be a definitive moment when changes had to be made, a low that the team has been working to climb from ever since. In the week leading up to last season’s loss to UNC, it became clear that the squad was missing the pop of previous years. “It’s very hard to sustain success,” Kelly explains, riffing on how easy it is to lose perspective, grow complacent, expect achievement rather than fight with every bit of energy and focus one has.

The day before that UNC loss, the Northwestern staff began to react to concerns they were having for much of the season. “We brought it back to our roots and practiced on Long Field where it first started,” Amonte Hiller remembers. They practiced on the first field the women’s lacrosse team had access to at Northwestern, a humble track of grass and dirt that symbolized a very basic beginning. The day before that UNC game, the 2010 squad connected with the grim conditions and gritty efforts that now makeup the legacy of those first Northwestern teams, the ones that lent their blood and backs for today’s players to stand tall on. They reflected on history and thought about where they wanted to go in the future, what their legacy as a program had been and what their legacy as players should be.

The Wildcats continue to move forward, but Amonte Hiller stays true to the approach of connecting with the past. She invites players of bygone years to talk about their experiences, their efforts, their struggles. And challenges current players to dream of a legacy they’ll be proud of, and then go out and sweat for it. And why does she do this? Because the past isn’t simply trophies in a case – it’s a collection of stories and struggles about persistence and failures, friendships and fights, dreams and achievements – and gaining perspective of how much goes into the act of winning fuels the effort it takes to do it.

What’s Next

Today the Northwestern squad is working, preparing to reclaim the trophy that they’ve come to identify as theirs. While other teams around the country might be just as dogged in their work ethic, stay just as focused on achieving, Amonte Hiller has one reason to think that her Wildcats are going to be triumphant. Even if other teams work as hard, have as much gusto and determination, Northwestern is going to do it differently. Sure, Northwestern may not win the championship in 2011, but they’re going to bring something new to the field, their going to bring their tradition and swagger, and if you’re not prepared you’re going to be thrown off by a dizzying combo of skill, passion and invention. They’ve made a game of being game changers and their legacy of evolution is a powerful force. Just how far it will drive them remains to be seen, but we’ll keep watching to study how they get to wherever they’re going because after all, lacrosse went to Chicago and will never be the same.

The Disillusionment of Generation X

While individual views of leadership are shaped by deeply personal experiences, the events common to a generation also subtly contribute. In thinking more recently about the themes common to Generation X, we've started examining the ideals and values of our youth that have yielded to a harsher reality as we aged. We've "creatively" labeled this the Gen-X Disillusionment, and to follow are four examples of unrealized social campaigns that have played out through our lifetime, leaving us to wonder about their impact on leadership decisions, desires and methods.

1. Give peace a chance
Although we came of age during the vague but ever-present threat of nuclear fallout brought on by the Cold War, we were raised in a remarkably peaceful time. We learned from the echoes of the baby boomer's call for peace, understanding their collective recoil from Vietnam. We grew up in a world that avoided confrontation, recognizing the Cold War as an effort by two super powers to avoid conflict. But then, shortly after we entered adulthood, Iraq invaded Kuwait City in the summer of 1990 and our generation experienced its first war, one that could easily be justified because we were protecting tiny Kuwait from its neighboring bully, Iraq. Ten years later, the September 11 attacks occurred, and we rightfully sent our military into Afghanistan.

But a subtle shift soon followed--one where a main tenet of Just War Theory, where military action is a last resort, was rationalized away. We invaded Iraq in 2003 and have been mired in conflict ever since, even redoubling our efforts in Afghanistan in 2009.

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Gen X in the workplace: Stuck in the middle

The latest from The Washington Post:

As we all know, Generation X is stuck in the middle of the two largest generations in history (the baby boomers and the millennials). At the "Rally to Restore Sanity" this past weekend, Jon Stewart used the example of cars merging into the Lincoln Tunnel as proof that people make compromises every day in order to get things done. He highlighted a "you go, and then I go" philosophy that enables us to navigate through our lives. Just as with Stewart's congested tunnel, the modern workplace is jammed with three generations cramming to move forward, but sometimes it feels like there's simply too much in the way of our meager little Xer generation to merge.

1. X Sandwich
A few weeks ago a column out of Richmond, VA,captured the generational debate: youngsters want the ol' fogeys out of the way, while the boomers want to keep on working, taking offense at the mention of yielding to their children. Between these perspectives are Gen-Xers. Boomers are staying put--either exercising their own sense of entitlement by indifferently coasting in tenured and senior positions without fears of being fired, or legitimately hustling through the onset of their golden years to squirrel away enough cash to retire. While the Government Accountability Office reported in 2006 the expectation that many boomers would work beyond the retirement age, few could have anticipated that scores of boomers would face the end of their careers without enough money to exit.

On the flip side, millennials seem impatient to advance up the corporate ladder, occasionally being slammed for their own sense of entitlement. As both groups jockey for position, Gen-Xers are left to alternately fend off overeager newbies and patiently wait to earn a rare opening at the top. Either way it's a battlefield, and no-man's land is an uncomfortable place to be.

2. Latchkey managers
Many Gen-Xers grew up as latchkey kids, having to care for themselves and in some cases their parents and siblings. Similarly, some Gen-Xers have surpassed their boomer counterparts in the corporate hierarchy, finding themselves in an equally awkward position and asking: "How can I manage someone who is ten to twenty years older than I am?"

In Managing the Older Worker, authors Cappelli and Novelli rightly point out that Gen-Xers' perceptions of older workers are part of the problem, as we might wrongly assume that they are less than adequate workers simply because we have advanced past them. But boomers play a part too, sometimes resisting the direction of a junior boss solely because of age or shutting down to become retired-on-the-job, collecting a paycheck by doing the bare minimum. At the same time, Gen-X managers are showing millennials the ropes, while often finding that this younger set values the end product more than they value the time they spend at the office and that they may not expect to sacrifice their highly prized work/home-life balance in order to advance their career.

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