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One of the unique aspects of the UCLA situation is that the culture change was effected without a leadership change. In my experience in the business world, transformation or turnaround efforts are almost never successful without a leadership change.

However when talking about UCLA, we should recognize that their WBB program was not in a hole. They just were kind of stagnant. They kept achieving success by many measures (NCAA tournaments, ranked teams, sweet 16s, All American players). But they could not break through to win big games. So Close was starting from a strong position already when she initiated a team culture remake. Stanford right now is in a deep hole.  And it is a generally accepted axiom that the leader who got you into a hole is not the person to get you out of it.

There was an excellent book by Jim Collins entitled:  "From good to great" that explained what was required to actually shift culture.  As I stated earlier, the Bruins were already a very good team but for Cori, being good was not sufficient.  You are absolutely right when you say 'Stanford right now is in a deep hole.....and the leader who got you into the hole is not the person to get you out of it.  And yet, KP is allowed to continue.  Simply amazing.

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One of the unique aspects of the UCLA situation is that the culture change was effected without a leadership change. In my experience in the business world, transformation or turnaround efforts are almost never successful without a leadership change.

However when talking about UCLA, we should recognize that their WBB program was not in a hole. They just were kind of stagnant. They kept achieving success by many measures (NCAA tournaments, ranked teams, sweet 16s, All American players). But they could not break through to win big games. So Close was starting from a strong position already when she initiated a team culture remake. Stanford right now is in a deep hole.  And it is a generally accepted axiom that the leader who got you into a hole is not the person to get you out of it.

There was an excellent book by Jim Collins entitled:  "From good to great" that explained what was required to actually shift culture.  As I stated earlier, the Bruins were already a very good team but for Cori, being good was not sufficient.  You are absolutely right when you say 'Stanford right now is in a deep hole.....and the leader who got you into the hole is not the person to get you out of it.  And yet, KP is allowed to continue.  Simply amazing.