The Captain Class- By Sam Walker

The Captain Class is many different genres trying to fit into one book. On the one hand it is a serious and sober examination of sports dynasties and how they come to be. This is of course an impossible task undertake, but Sam Walker takes a very logical and serious look at the topic. It is also a primer for what makes something like a sports dynasty come alive and breathe and succeed. It is also a book on leadership and what makes a leader in the sports context.

Truth be told, I feel like he succeeded in all of his missions but the important part is that he did not go down some well-trod paths. For that I am eternally grateful.

Part I of the book describes the process by which he takes all the successful sports teams, from many time periods, from almost all sports, and he applies various sieves to disqualify candidates so that he has a manageable number of candidates to analyze. This alone is a large job, and a contentious one that would involve just about every denizen of every sports bar and pub the world over. I won’t get into his process, needless to say it will be the start of many a conversation, and his reasoning and explanation should be read and thought over by the reader.

The author comes up with sixteen teams. Sixteen iconic teams that the author labeled as his Tier One teams; by the way, he helpfully lists the Tier One teams and the Tier two teams in the appendix of the book, i.e. those teams that barely missed being tier one. This appendix will be well thumbed in the future by this reader.

The next daunting task is to examine at all the teams and to come to a conclusion as what made these teams Tier one, what drove them to being so salient amongst the many, which factor defined the success of that team. This is yet another impossible task, one that will also be debated ad infinitum. Once again, the author does an admirable and thoughtful job of considering a large number of factors and then writing an erudite defense of his analysis. Again, this is argument fodder amongst the denizens of the bars and pubs as well as the denizens of board rooms, think tanks, B schools, and consulting firms.

His conclusion is that what drives the bus for these teams, are the captains of these teams, a throwback position in our entitlement society, a society that disdains hierarchy and a position that serves the greater good of the team. He explains why he moved past the mythical and iconoclastic belief in the coach, or the idolatry of the superstar athlete and settled on the water carrying captain. Again, I won’t repeat his arguments from the book because he does a much better job than I ever will, since he carried the water for the book and I think his argument, the way he phrased it, is important for the reader to absorb and consider.

Part II of the book lists seven qualities that the author feel are unique and defining for a Tier one captain. He describes in depth, using anecdotes and extensive interviews with those captains, the unique and critical qualities that make these men and women so very successful and so very unique. Each chapter is a cogent explanation of each quality that the author feels is crucial for the success of each of these captains.

Part III is the counterexample. The story of the Tier 2 captains, who had all the necessary qualities, except for that one critical quality which doomed them to Tier 2 rather than Tier 1, a cautionary tale.

The well-trod path that the author did not go down is the path of the ubiquitous and trite path of the vast majority of business books. This book could very easily have become a mish mash retelling of the same points and sold as a formulaic recipe for success. The bane of the modern day business world is this formulaic grinding out of uninteresting and useless tomes detailing simplistic recitations of some Powerpoint bullets.

Sam Walker has too much respect for the subject; more importantly, he appreciates the complexity and coupled nature of the successful captaincy. He has lain out what he feels is super salient about these captains and he is smart enough to not lead the reader to believe that the results of the great captain can be duplicated simplistically. He leaves it to us  to try to put the facts together, to think about the ramifications of what we can do to develop those seven qualities, either for ourselves or as a coach or teacher for a student.

As I finished the book, I was actually hoping for some pithy summation for my convenience, but in the end, I was grateful that he avoided the clichéd business school content. Now I can think deeply and critically on his arguments.

To be fair, the author does reiterate the major points that he wanted to make at the end of each chapter, but it is a re-statement of the argument and not a how-to guide.

Whether you are a sports fan, a coach, a consultant, or anyone having to do with developing people into leaders, this is an excellent and challenging addition to your library.