Who’s your no-stats all-star?

It’s been more than a decade since Michael Lewis invented a new sports archetype — the No-Stats All-Star. He profiled Shane Battier, who he deemed a basketball mystery: “a player [who] is widely regarded inside the N.B.A. as, at best, a replaceable cog in a machine driven by superstars. And yet every team he has ever played on has acquired some magical ability to win.”

One of Battier’s general managers calls him “the most abnormally unselfish basketball player he has ever seen…helping the team in all sorts of subtle, hard-to-measure ways that appear to violate his own personal interests.”

In basketball, Battier’s style of play is an anomaly. But in startups, it defines many of the most successful teams I’ve worked with. But, like Battier, the no-stats all-stars of a startup can be undervalued and their contributions unsung. They may not produce shiny stats — customer contracts, difficult engineering feats, and new product features — but they can be the glue that holds the company together, empowering others to do great things.

I often see no-stats all-stars masquerading as something operational — Chiefs of Staff, Directors of Operations, COOs, etc. It takes an abnormally unselfish individual to do a job that is defined by responsibility for “everything else.” Often, it gets noticed only when something goes wrong. But no-stats all-stars exist in all functions — product, engineering, sales/marketing, etc. — and they thrive in the early, messy phases of a young startup.

If you have a no-stats all-star, you know who they are.

If you don’t, hire one (or a few). Your success may hinge on it.

By definition, they can be hard to find (no stats, after all), but here are a few clues:

• Atypically long tenures
• Tend to work with and move around with people they know (and who know their value)
• Strikingly positive outlook
• Job descriptions may seem vague and unremarkable on the surface, but references sing their praises; they “just make work better.”
• Track record of doing work that is both way above and way below their pay grade, from re-ordering coffee pods to exploring new business opportunities. They somehow just figure it out.

In the time since Michael Lewis wrote that first article, basketball stats have evolved to better value the no-stats all-star. The best teams were the first to shift towards stats that reflected the actual value of their players, while worse teams took longer. A CEO has many many jobs. One of them, like that of a forward-thinking GM, is to find, appropriately value, and nurture no-stats all-stars. This means seeking out their qualities during interviews and reference calls; celebrating their contributions even if they don’t show up in the top-line stats; and empowering them so that they can transfer some of their superpowers to their teammates.

This post is dedicated to the many many no-stats all-stars in the Spero portfolio.