This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We get a chance today to visit with one of the brightest people I get to visit with regularly, David Pivnik, who's a long-term partner at McGuire Woods, but also a brilliantly well-rounded, brilliant person and was valed in the tournive as law school class, which is, you know, as a lawyer myself by background. That's a very hard thing to do to be valed in the tournive anything. So a really gifted guy. We're going to talk today about teams and whether you stack your best teammates together or you separate them out to make multiple solid teams. And this applies in business and in sports. And I want to get his take on this. David, the core topic today is stacking top talent versus spreading it out. What is your take on this? Do the best leaders put their strongest players together on the most important business objective, the most important client, or do they spread them out so they get multiple leaders of different teams? How do you think about that in terms of a core strategy or do you have thoughts on that as a core strategy? Yes. I mean, Scott, great to be on the chat with you as always. I think the first point there, and it's not to duck the question. It's really to try to answer it is, I do think it depends heavily on what you're trying to accomplish, what the team is actually set out to do, and then what the sort of players or team components, what the composition looks like. If you've got a sort of bet the company litigation and it matters about to go to trial, I think having a sort of all hands on deck approach and putting all your best assets forward, all your best litigators on it makes a lot of sense, but you need to be figuring out how to allocate those pieces. There's not going to be five first-chair attorneys in that trial. There's going to be one person who's ultimately the first chair and then everyone else has that role. And so thinking about whether there are folks who are incredibly talented trial lawyers, but they have different strengths at our complementary is critical because you don't want to have three people whose best skill, for example, is jury selection and openings and closing, and you're losing out or missing out of people who really excel at, for example, cross-examining tricky witnesses on the other side or handling the examination of experts. So I think the answer is there's not sort of a one-size spits all. You should always have all your best talent, or you can never have your best talent in an ideal world. You're going to have talent and pieces that are complementary and fit well together, but you got to be able to assess the team, figure out the different strengths, make sure that the folks you're picking have complementary strengths and where they have weaknesses. There are others on the team who could pick up those weaknesses, but also that everybody's going to be able to play well in the sandbox. Somebody is usually going to be the leader of the team. In sports, it might be a coach. In a business setting, it might be the CEO or a manager at a different level, et cetera, but figuring out how everyone's going to react to that, making sure that the teammates themselves are complementary and that they're going to be able to work together to get a great result is critical. And so I don't think it allows for one-size spits all, and that skill set thing resonates. And I think it's easy to look at in sports. We often draw parallels. You don't want to have five guys who are just unbelievably great at scoring the basketball on a basketball team, but can't play any defense or don't move the ball because you're just going to end up with a bunch of frustrated stars who don't have the ball in their hands enough. Or in hockey, you want to make sure you're balancing a line in a key moment. Do not just have scoring and speed, but also to have defensive awareness, a little bit of physicality. So it can be, not that I'm saying don't ever have all your best resources align to moving in the same direction. It's more a function of making sure that you're deploying those resources in an effective manner where they can be complementary to one another and be working collaboratively, not at cross purposes. Thank you very, very much. And let me ask you a question, David. In terms of sort of sports, you have some teams, and let's talk about the NBA where some people take their starting five, and of course they can't all be guards, although some teams that would be the case, but your true best guards, your best center, your best forwards. And then sometimes there's a sixth man or that plays in the second line that often is second rotation, that often is as good or better than some of the guys in the first line, but the coach has made a decision, this is a better guy to interject in. He's not necessarily going to be playing a lot with the second group of guys or the second rotation, but with the first line. How do you think about that? Where does that work? And then I'll contrast it with hockey, where I see, you know, one of the things that drives this subject is, you know, I happen to be fans of the Chicago Blackhawks, and I know once we start talking sports and specifically hockey, I get down to a smaller audience that's really interested, but I am sort of incredibly irritated with the Blackhawks coach, where we've got this crazy talent in Conor Bedard, a couple of other crazy talented young players, and instead of putting them together, he's spreading them all out amongst three different lines, and I view it as almost coaching male practice, because it doesn't give Bedard the talent to play with to try and get better, it doesn't necessarily give Anthony Fondel the same thing, and similarly with Frank Nazar and Frank's a little bit of a different question, but with the sixth-man issue, with really separating out all your talents in hockey, is that male practice or can that work? The short answer is I think it can work, and I think a lot of it depends on what you're trying to accomplish with the different units and the different roles. So in the basketball example, I think a lot of really good teams, you know, the Eli Dive this year are a great example of this with when they were at their best in the tournament, they were deploying Andres Soyakovic off the bench, which doesn't intuitively make sense, because he's clearly one of the five best players on the team, probably pretty clearly one of the best three, but over the course of the year, it became pretty clear that Soyakovic, Boswell, and Wogler didn't play at their best when they were all out there, whether that was a ball movement, ball sharing dynamic, or something else, the results were pretty clear that the team did not do as well. And so, Brad Underwood made the pivot of we're going to put in a scorer to leave the offense off the bench who could drive the ball. And so I think it was looking at identifying, I think Brad Underwood did a great job, identifying talent where there were disconnects, where maybe his five guys, five best, weren't complimentary, and it made sense to retool. I think a lot of NBA teams deploy a sixth man where they're looking to say, we want someone who can come in and leave the offense, maybe be a little bit more ball dominant than anyone in our first unit, and keep the offense and the scoring going when some of our stars are on the bench. So oftentimes, it's not really your sixth best player who's coming in as a sixth man, it might be your third or fourth best player, at least on the offensive side of the ball. And so I think figure here, I think there's a parallel to non sports as well, where you might have folks who are sort of key glue guys, glue women, glue men in the department, people who everyone sort of collaborates well with, who can come in and help drive things behind the scenes or play a critical role, even though they might not be upfront. And so I think a lot of it is personnel management and identifying the right talent that with the Blackhawks, I will reserve judgment. I share your frustration, but I reserve judgment on it primarily because this is a lost season. The Blackhawks are almost certainly going to end up the second worst team in the league. We're going to get another top five pick, hopefully number one or number two, where we can get another offensive superstar. And I think right now, it really is just trying to identify what we have. Centers are more valuable than wingers. And so Bidad, who in a lot of me, Bidad is a superstar. He will be a superstar for years to come. I am an unabashed fan of Connor Bidad. And I think there is very bright things in his future. But he hasn't necessarily demonstrated yet that he's elite at some of the things that good sentiment do. He's not, he's picked up a lot. He's improved a lot on the draw, but he's not terrific defensively. Again, improving. He's got to keep taking those strides to play center long term versus becoming a winger. And I think he'll do it because I think he's that good, but he's got that improved and needed. Frank Dazer, I think he's at a similar spot. And Frondel, I think the team just doesn't know. So I think right now, the coach is really trying to put guys in positions to have opportunities so we can evaluate as a team what we have long term because if Frondel is able to play center, that makes him materially more valuable to the team going forward. It opens up a lot of other opportunities. I think it's a big concern where Connor Bidad's linemates this year simply haven't been good enough. Yeah, Bidad's going to get sick of playing. There was an old, old Saturday Live skit that I believe included Jane Curtin and Dan Ekroyd. Do you know the skit that I'm talking about? I do not. This might be for your time, but, but, and I can't do this on line with everybody listening, but after Jane Curtin talks for a while, Dan Ekroyd has a very famous line where he takes down or puts down Jane Curtin. And so if we were not in polite company because there's now, I don't know how many people listening, but thousands and thousands downloads and lots of people might listen, I would respond to you with the line that Dan Ekroyd used to use with Jane Curtin and you'll find it on line today at some point, but it's not important. But I disagree. I think he's got to stack players together because Bidad's going to get frustrated if he's not playing with the best of the best talent. And it's a horrible thing to see a great young player start to get frustrated because he's not, I mean, if he starts to light it up and have 100 point seasons, he's going to be a happy guy and be a cornerstone of this team forever. Like Celebrini started to do in San Jose. And I just think it's a real error not to put him with the very best talent on the team, but it is what it is. I mean, I'm sort of like, I'm annoyed to say the least at Blais Hill and we'll see how it goes, but you, you know, you seem to be more in between on this, but I guess my main response that would be if we were talking in December, when the team had been on a bit of a run and it looked like they might be a contender for the playoffs this year, et cetera, I would have a different perspective. But where they're at now and knowing that Frondel is going to get about, you know, a dozen games this year, none of which are meaningful. I think it is better to help evaluate where he's at. I think there was significant mismanagement all season continuing to play Conor Bedard with Andre Burkowski, who, you know, not to knock the guy, but Burkowski's been legitimately dreadful for about 35 games now. And Green, the other line mate, he is a very solid player who I think has a bright future, but just frankly is not at the level of Conor Bedard. He simply isn't. And so I think the real dynamic more than anything else is figuring out how to navigate long-term the growth and development of those players. But where we're at right now, seeing what we have with Frondel and Nazar on their own lines, I think makes sense. And I think next year you're going to see some of these guys back together, plus hopefully a free agency ad, and then a top two pick coming in to play right away. Well, let's hope so. I do think, and I'll send you the quote from the Certain Live Skits, at least you'll understand what I think give your thoughts on this issue, although generally I think you're one of the smartest, smartest people that I know, but I'll send them to you offline, so as not to offend our audience. So, but if I'm building a team at the law firm or in a business that I'm part of, I want really bright people working together so that the really bright people can really run at their horsepower and run side by side with people at their horsepower. I don't want them having to manage people that are sort of that can't play the same game with them. It's similar here in sports. I want great players playing with great players so that you really get some chemistry going and get the growth going. And if the great players are to alpha each other to play with each other, then shame on them. But I basically want great talent playing with great talent and stacking around our most important objectives and so forth. Fantastic. David, tell us in terms of these issues, let me go back here to to catch up on the next question here. Are there places where essentially you see people stacking talent and that backfires? When do you see that? And we all have examples of this, but talk to us about a couple examples where you put the best talent together and that's a disaster. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I think where that happens most frequently, it's a personality issue more than anything else. And I think that's both a leadership failure and a person of personal failure amongst those top talent. Where it happens, it's because at the end of the day, you've got people who are both elite talents, whether that's as lawyers, as managers, as executives or as athletes, but they're not complementary to what it is. It might be that they always want to be the loudest voice in the room and the person doing the most talking. And so when someone else is there who also wants to be the lead voice, they talk over each other, they shout each other down, they disagree. That's where I see it fail is where the stacking of talent is such that you have your two or three or five truly most talented people in an individual sense, but you don't have the team collaboration and they're not complementary pieces. So that says a lot of disagreement, bickering, trying to one up one another, etc. And I think that happens in business law and sports. And the main takeaway I would say is just evaluating how you're deploying that talent so that you're putting people in a position to succeed and not overdoing it, where you're overloading one line in sports or one unit in sports or one team in business with too much talent that doesn't work well together at the expense of the overall result. No, it's your point. We've certainly seen that a lot in sports. I mean, where we've got people that just want to score and play, don't play defense, but great scorers and there's just not enough ball to go around for those great scorers. We certainly see that in sports. In business, we certainly see that as well. You get two alphas in a room, running the room. And we always say to people in some situations, you're going to be a one, meaning the leader of the team, in other situations, you're going to be a two, meaning part of the team, and you got to learn to live in both roles. In some times, you have people that just can't learn to live in both roles. How would you decide what a situation calls for really stacking all the talent together and developing a super team versus distributing your best people across multiple teams? Yeah, I mean, I think it really depends on the stakes. I think it is that simple. You've got more represented clients that the company litigation is going to be something of a spare no expense, put all the right people on it, do the necessary work, and build against that obligation. If you're in the playoffs in game seven and the fourth quarter of a basketball game or the third quarter, third period, I'm sorry, I have a hockey game, you're obviously going to want to make sure you're stacking the line. And so I think it really is, as a general state, the day to day, not every project, not every case is going to warrant having your best 10 people on it. The expense, the cost, the dynamics, don't warrant that. We try and staff cases appropriately with balance between associates, partners, counsel, paralegals, etc. based on the needs of the case. We're not just going to throw our best quote unquote bodies at it every time because that's going to be expensive for the client and unwarranted. But the other dynamic is making sure that, going back to the last question, in those instances where stacking talent is what we're going to be looking to do, where the situation does call for. We are now in a met the company situation or win it all cost game. It remains very important to be making sure that the talent that you're stacking is complementary, will work well together and is going to be effective in that role. And you'll get, with an easy sports analogy, one of the reasons the Black Ops were so successful for several years in 2010 to 2015 is because they did have so many complementary pieces. And a lot of that was driven by guys like Duncan Keith, who doesn't get the praise he deserves in Jonathan Taze, because a guy like Patrick Haynes in Elite Score, one of the best American hockey players of all time, is not the best, a great Elite Score for many years and always seemed to step up in the playoffs. But Duncan Keith drove the blue line. I mean, he would play an ungodly number of minutes. He was never tired. He could play in his own end. He was physical. He would pass. He didn't require the puck on his stick to contribute. Jonathan Taze, one draws, was a great vocal leader, also led by example, played great defensively, but scored a ton in the playoffs. And so the Black Ops built a team, host of very much a two way forward. They built a team with superstars that were all very complementary and where they eventually... It was no depth. And Taze and Kane, to their credit, did a very good job of playing off each other. Taze kind of let Kane be the alpha, even though Taze was crazily talented as well. And then Mary Hosa, as you said, played both lines. And Patrick Sharp was great too. And they had good goals on those teams. But that was, you know, they tried to rebuild on the fly and couldn't do that. That's where they ended up really struggling. But they won three Stanley Cups. So God bless them. You know, I think, you know, I guess one other question I have for you is this, David, is, is there a spot, and I know this is not that different than, you know, how often to stacking leaders, and you already talked about this some, but is there a way to deal with when you stack leaders and two of them are alpha and you create friction? Is there a way to deal with that? And can you deal with that effectively? Or at some point, you just throw your hands up and put them in different spots, different areas, different cases, different lines? Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is, you know, get clear need assessment needs to be done at the beginning to figure out, does this case matter, dispute, business opportunity project, doesn't warrant the level of talent and the team stacking, so to speak. First of all, that's the first thing. The second thing is figuring out, are the most talented folks going to be complimentary, going to be able to work together? And if the cut is, they may not be perfectly situated, you know, as compliments, but, but it is such high stakes. It's such a high stakes matter that we really need all hands on deck with our stars. And then I think there's something to be said for level setting. And, you know, the good manager is going to make the cut of, we need people, persons X, Y, Z on this, because we just need that level of talent. But then it's going to be sitting out in advance and discussing with the team, but also with the individuals, here's what your role is going to be. Here's who's sort of, who is going to be the captain of this heat. Making that clear before you stack them, it's going to be person X, who's going to be first chair at a trial, who's going to be the lead person on a deal, explaining to everyone else what their roles are going to be, making sure you're evaluating how that's working and making adjustments as necessary if there is friction or things aren't going as planned. So I don't think it's something that can't be done, but I think it requires careful coordination. You've got the additional assessment of, does this make sense? Will it work? But then also the pivot of, also the direction to the team of, here's how everyone's being positioned, here's why we think this can be effective, here's your roles, and then the willingness to pivot if they need adjusting afterwards. David, I absolutely love that. I'm going to make a deal with our audience. One, thank you so much, David, for joining us. One of the very brightest people I get to visit with always, and quite frankly, it's a real tribute to your mother and father who raised an incredibly bright, I would say young man, but no longer the kid that you once were, but still quite young compared to me. But this is a real tribute to your parents, how bright you and your sister are. So that goes almost without saying. But let me go a step further with our audience. I made a reference to a famous skit that Gene Curtin and Dan Acroyd used to do on Serenade Live. The first person that texted me at 773-766-5322, that could send me the line that Dan Acroyd used in response to Gene Curtin, after Gene Curtin insulted Dan Acroyd just so we have the fairness there, I will send a $100 Amazon gift card too. That's our deal for the day. So 773-766-5322, did you like the podcast? One question. Second is, what is the line that Dan Acroyd used with Gene Curtin in Serenade Live skits? I'm aging myself, but $100 to the first listener who sends it in. It can't be David or our producer, Chanel, because I've already shared it with you. So that would be unfair. I want to thank you, David, for joining us. I want to thank our audience for listening. We love getting a chance to visit with David, one of the smartest people I ever get to visit with. He's right in the top 200 brightest people I get to talk to, really gifted. Just kidding. He's actually one of the top, top people I ever get to visit with the brightest as they come. Thank you so much. And thank you for more to the Pyvnic parents who raised him just fantastic. I mean, couldn't have been easy. David, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Scott.
