How to Build a Superteam That Keeps Getting Better

By Ron Friedman, HBR Magazine May-June 2026

In the spring of 2022, after a grueling 58-loss season, the Oklahoma City Thunder sat near the bottom of the NBA standings. Then something remarkable happened: The franchise started getting better, fast.

The following season the team won 40 games, blowing past Vegas projections by more than 16 wins. The next year it jumped to 57 wins, exceeding expectations by 12.5. A year later the team reached 68 wins, another 10.5 above forecasts. In just three seasons the Thunder surged from the bottom to the top of the league. Despite having the youngest roster ever to earn the number one seed, the team finished the season as the NBA champion.

How does a team improve so quickly? That question isn’t just about basketball. It’s about how any group can learn, adapt, and succeed in an age of accelerated change.

During the past few years, my colleagues and I have been investigating a question at the heart of organizational success: What do the best teams do differently? To find out we surveyed more than 6,000 knowledge workers across a wide range of industries—from finance and law to healthcare and technology—and collected detailed data on how their teams set priorities, make decisions, and collaborate.

To identify members of high-performing teams, we had respondents first rate their team’s effectiveness and then compare its performance with that of other teams in their industry. (Prior research has shown that people’s belief about their team’s ability is one of the best predictors of real-world results, making it a reliable proxy for team performance.) Workers who scored their team 10 out of 10 on both measures were designated members of “superteams,” allowing us to compare their behaviors with everyone else’s.

Among those superteams, the formula for high performance looked remarkably similar. Superteams share three key strengths: (1) They get more done by managing time, energy, and attention more efficiently; (2) their members actively make one another better; and (3) they’re constantly building new skills and improving over time.

It is that last strength—improving over time—that the Thunder has clearly mastered. Its rapid ascent over the past few years is not an anomaly. It’s part of a pattern that has defined the organization since it moved to Oklahoma City from Seattle, in 2008. After its arrival, the team entered a full rebuild, prioritizing long-term progress over instant results. Yet in just four seasons it reached the NBA Finals, in 2012.

But success in the NBA rarely lasts. Star players age, salaries rise, and league spending rules push even the best teams to rebuild. What makes the Thunder organization exceptional is that it pulled off the same improbable climb a second time: not only in its early years but again in today’s faster, three-point-heavy game, both times with one of the youngest teams ever to contend for a title.

How did the Thunder do it? By applying strategies that are surprisingly common among superteams—strategies that any group can use to accelerate improvement in an AI-driven world where a team’s ability to learn and adapt has never been more crucial.

How to Drive Continuous Improvement

At the center of every learning culture is a leader who makes growth a daily priority. Our research uncovered seven practices that top leaders use to foster continuous improvement. The same principles that built a championship team can help any leader create a team that keeps getting better.

1. Run more experiments. Superteams evolve by trying new approaches, even when things are going well. By contrast, average teams often stall as soon as they find something that works. They stop asking questions. They stop trying new things. And eventually they fall behind.

In our research, superteams reported experimenting nearly 50% more often than their average peers did. Those experiments can range from small trials, such as A/B website testing, to much bigger ones, such as selling a new offering before it exists. The key is to always be working on something that yields new insights, learning, and growth.

You can see that mindset reflected in today’s most innovative companies. Meta, Netflix, and Amazon, for example, run thousands of experiments a year, testing everything from product features to new business ideas.

But experimentation doesn’t always spread on its own. At Spotify leaders noticed the same pattern we saw in our research. A few teams were experimenting; most were not. So leadership set out to increase experimentation at scale by creating an internal platform called Confidence, which made testing easy and transparent. Any team could launch an experiment, share results, and learn from others’ data. Within a year more than 300 teams were running tests that shaped everything from playlist design to podcast discovery.

Making experimentation easy is only half the equation. It’s just as important for leaders to make it safe to try new things and occasionally fail. When Reid Hoffman cofounded LinkedIn, he gave his team members an unusual goal: He dared them to fail 15% of the time. “In order to move fast,” he told them, “I expect you’ll make some foot faults.” Similarly, Reed Hastings, the cofounder and chairman of Netflix, would often challenge his team members when too many of their shows became hits. The lack of failure didn’t mean they were getting it right, he felt. It meant they weren’t taking enough risks.

Like Hoffman and Hastings, superteam leaders are three times more likely than average-team leaders to reward intelligent risks, even when outcomes fall short. That’s why, compared to average teams, superteams are 30% more open to trying new things and 39% more comfortable taking risks.

A willingness to experiment has been foundational to the Thunder. While most organizations double down on what has worked in the past, the Thunder has built a competitive edge by doing what no one else would do. Twice the organization traded away All-Stars in their prime to start over from scratch, blowing up a team that had playoff potential in exchange for draft picks, long before that strategy was considered viable. It also abandoned basketball’s traditional formula of one center, two forwards, and two guards, experimenting instead with lineups that featured two centers, no center, or three point guards. “A big part of our success in Oklahoma City,” the organization’s general manager, Sam Presti, has explained, “has been our tolerance for the messiness and even the regression of pursuing progress and growth.”

The takeaway: The best leaders do more than encourage experimentation. They make it safe to try, easy to conduct, and rewarding to learn from.

2. Make curiosity contagious. A common misconception about great leaders is that they have all the answers. Our research tells a different story. Leaders of superteams don’t pretend to know everything. In fact, they’re 33% more likely than leaders of average teams to acknowledge that they lack important information.

Admitting knowledge gaps comes with surprising benefits. Studies show that far from wanting a boss who’s a know-it-all, most people prefer a leader who shows intellectual humility. Leaders who are transparent about their limitations are also seen as more trustworthy and competent.

By pairing “I’m not sure” with a clear follow-up, such as “but I know who to ask,” leaders make it safe for others to admit their own knowledge gaps, fostering a culture of continuous learning. That small act builds psychological safety, the single strongest predictor of team performance according to a landmark study of 180 teams that Google conducted in 2012.

Leaders of superteams also model curiosity when they engage with others. Compared to leaders of average teams, they’re 56% more likely to ask thoughtful questions and 53% more likely to show genuine interest in learning from their employees.

The belief that learning can come from anyone creates a team that is more open, adaptive, and committed to getting better. It’s also at the core of reverse-mentorship programs, which pair senior executives with young employees to help the veterans learn to navigate the ever-evolving world of social media.

Reverse mentorship was popularized by Jack Welch at GE in the 1990s. Today the Estée Lauder Companies have expanded the idea dramatically. More than 470 reverse mentorships across 20 markets connect senior leaders there with junior colleagues who bring fresh perspectives on culture and technology. When a new trend appears on TikTok or YouTube, these young mentors help senior executives understand what it means for the brand. Estée Lauder has even formed a youth advisory board that shapes products and campaigns, ensuring that executives stay connected to the customers they serve.

Learning works best when it is a two-way street. That’s a philosophy that the Thunder’s head coach, Mark Daigneault, has embraced. “I try to approach the job in a way that everyone in the program is continuing their education in the job they’re in, including me,” he has said. “It’s not necessarily about me being the teacher and them being the student. It’s about everybody in the room being on a journey of…personal growth and trying to access their best.”

Curiosity takes hold when leaders treat learning as a team sport. The more openly they explore ideas, seek out new perspectives, and turn insights into shared learning, the faster their teams evolve.

3. Ask the one question most leaders avoid. On many teams, meetings focus on sharing progress. Colleagues take turns providing updates that make work sound complete and under control, which can make it hard to raise obstacles in need of attention.

Superteams use meetings differently. Our research shows that superteam leaders are 43% more likely than average team leaders to guide discussion toward problems that need solving. One simple way to start is by asking your team, “What are you stuck on?” It’s a question that does far more than uncover problems. It normalizes challenge, invites honesty, and signals that asking for help is a mark of engagement, not weakness.

In recent years Microsoft has grown by succeeding across an unusually wide range of domains: gaming with Xbox, cloud computing with Azure, collaboration with Teams, AI with Copilot, hardware with Surface, professional networking with LinkedIn. That kind of breadth creates complexity, which is why one of the quiet drivers of Microsoft’s execution is Scrum, a shared way of working designed to surface problems early.

Scrum is an approach to teamwork in which a small group works in short cycles, shares updates frequently, and adapts to challenges as they arise. The name comes from rugby, where a scrum describes players working tightly together as a unit to advance the ball.

At the heart of Scrum is a short daily practice carried out in stand-up meetings and centered on three questions that keep teams aligned and moving: What did I work on yesterday? What will I work on today? And what is blocking my progress?

The first two questions build momentum, and the third accelerates learning. By making blockers explicit, teams surface problems while they’re still small and turn individual hurdles into shared challenges. Admitting obstacles no longer carries a stigma, and learning is more likely to occur.

You see a similar commitment to learning inside the Thunder, where Daigneault reminds players that the goal is progress, not perfection. “Every player’s going to turn the ball over,” he has said. “Every player’s going to make a wrong play. I’m going to call the wrong play. I’m going to mess a game up here and there. What’s critical for teams, with so many flawed human beings coming together in a highly emotional environment, is creating an air of acceptance with everybody.”

Both organizations’ approaches illustrate that learning requires the expectation of the occasional setback. The moment problems can be acknowledged without embarrassment is the moment a team becomes more resilient, more adaptable, and more capable of improving together.

4. Roll up your sleeves, even when you don’t have to. Leaders are often taught that their job is to stay out of the weeds. They’re told to delegate tasks, focus on strategy, and let others handle the execution. But our research shows that the best leaders don’t disappear once the plan is made. They stay involved to model high standards, spot roadblocks, and identify where the next key improvement might come from.

It’s important to make a distinction between involvement and micromanagement, which comes down to intent and impact. Strong leaders work shoulder to shoulder with team members, building their capacity; micromanagers hover, correct, and take over, leaving people dependent and diminishing their capacity.

At the Thunder, Presti built his reputation on doing the work others avoided. Previously, while working his way up the ranks with the San Antonio Spurs, he spent months on the road scouting players in remote gyms, earning the nickname “the NBA’s Indiana Jones.” Even now, with a full scouting department, Presti still spends most of his year on the road and in the film room, studying players most fans have never heard of. It’s a choice that sends a clear message to the rest of his team: No task is beneath him.

That turns out to be a common approach among superteam leaders. While managers on average teams are likely to hand off tasks and focus solely on oversight, superteam leaders are far more apt to jump in and contribute to the work itself.

When people see that their leader is willing to do hard and tedious tasks, responsibility feels shared and collaboration deepens. Being in the trenches also gives leaders a clearer view of emerging opportunities and challenges, allowing them to guide improvement in real time.

That insight resonates with entrepreneurs like Brian Chesky. After Airbnb’s near collapse during the pandemic, Chesky, one of its cofounders, realized that the popular approach of hiring smart people and stepping aside had backfired. By stepping too far back he had lost sight of what made the company successful. So he went back to making product decisions and reimmersed himself in the customer experience—and Airbnb rallied.

Chesky described that turnaround in a recent talk at Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, where it struck a nerve. Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham later wrote about it, calling the approach “Founder Mode.” The idea went viral because it conveyed what many leaders had begun to feel: Detachment breeds drift.

You might expect that staying so involved would lead to burnout. Research shows the opposite. A study in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found that managers who work alongside their teams actually feel more energized and effective. Those who manage from a distance report higher stress and exhaustion. The explanation is simple: When leaders lose visibility into the work, they make decisions with incomplete information and spend their days reacting to problems they never saw coming.

5. Make feedback feel like support. The faster a team learns what is working and what is not, the faster it improves. Unsurprisingly, our research shows that leaders of superteams deliver significantly more—and better—feedback than leaders of average teams.

On superteams more than 90% of workers say their leader delivers feedback that motivates improvement without coming across as critical. That’s a remarkable finding, especially when you consider that on average teams, finding a manager who knows how to do either of those things is about as likely as winning a coin toss.

Knowing how to give effective feedback is a rare skill. In fact, a comprehensive analysis of more than 600 studies, published in Psychological Bulletin, found that in more than a third of cases feedback not only fails to improve performance but actually makes it worse. The reason is elemental: Delivered poorly, feedback demoralizes; delivered well, it unlocks growth.

So what’s the secret to providing feedback that reliably drives better outcomes? One essential ingredient is framing mistakes as useful data on the path to improvement.

At the Thunder, Daigneault understands that learning from mistakes can be surprisingly difficult, especially after a bad performance. “We had a game where we had 30 turnovers,” he once recalled, “and I did a film edit of the turnovers to a Springsteen song. I told them, ‘If I’m gonna have to watch 30 turnovers again, I at least want to be listening to Bruce Springsteen while I do it.’”

Daigneault was doing something essential: keeping the brain in learning mode. Under threat the mind narrows its focus to self-protection. By lowering tension Daigneault kept players engaged and curious precisely when learning was most needed.

His approach highlights a universal truth: People learn best when feedback feels safe. Yet in many workplaces feedback has the opposite effect. Formal reviews turn learning into judgment, triggering defensiveness instead of curiosity.

That realization led Adobe to rethink how it evaluated performance. The company replaced annual reviews with short, informal check-ins that emphasized ongoing conversations about goals and growth. Instead of rating performance once a year, managers began having open conversations about progress—asking questions, sharing observations, and helping employees adjust course in real time. The results were striking: Adobe saved 80,000 work hours that once had been spent on reviews, voluntary turnover fell 34%, and the percentage of employees who said “the feedback I receive helps me perform” rose eight points.

6. Encourage growth, even when it doesn’t benefit you. Moonlighting—the practice of taking on a side job outside regular work hours—is often viewed by leaders as a threat. Many assume that it divides workers’ attention or signals a lack of commitment. But research suggests the contrary. In a Frontiers in Psychology study of 324 employees, moonlighting was shown to predict higher engagement, especially for people drawn to autonomy and mastery. In other words, yes, moonlighting can hurt engagement when people take a second job out of necessity or boredom, but for those seeking challenge and growth it can boost energy and focus in their main role.

Within our study we found that superteam leaders are more likely to support employees’ moonlighting pursuits. To be clear, that doesn’t mean that they actively encourage workers to find a side hustle. But what it does suggest is that on the best teams, workers believe their leader genuinely supports their growth, even when that growth has no immediate payoff at work.

The same values show up when employees decide to leave. We found that workers on superteams were twice as likely to feel supported after announcing their departure and three times more likely to stay in touch with their manager after leaving than workers on average teams were. Those connections often evolve into informal alumni networks that generate referrals, rehires, and lasting goodwill.

Many leading companies share this philosophy of investing in personal growth even when it propels employees in new directions. HubSpot encourages employees to build side projects that help them better understand the entrepreneurs they serve. Keap, which sells small-business software, gives all employees a free license for its software so that they can run their own ventures and see the product through a customer’s eyes. At Basecamp people can get reimbursed for exploring outside interests, provided they share what they learn with the team.

Haberman, a Minneapolis marketing agency, takes it a step further, giving employees $1,000 and three paid days off a year to pursue personal passions. Some take courses. Others make films or start community projects. Sarah Haberman, a cofounder of the company, explains the policy by noting that it’s “bad business to limit an employee’s interests.” People who stretch themselves outside work, she believes, bring that energy and creativity back inside. Side pursuits can also expose people to new tools, communities, and skills that they often bring back to the team, expanding what the group is capable of accomplishing together.

7. Lead with meaning, not just metrics. When people understand why their work matters, they exhibit more energy, collaborate more effectively, and take greater pride in the results. They also share a sense of purpose that drives ongoing improvement.

When work feels meaningful, teams aren’t satisfied with “good enough.” They keep looking for better ways to deliver. Consider the Thunder, a team that lost its identity as the Seattle SuperSonics when the franchise relocated in 2008. It arrived in Oklahoma City with little more than a roster. The city itself was still scarred by the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, a tragedy that defined its past more than shaped its future.

Soon after arriving, Presti visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial and came across a quote from the journalist Tom Brokaw about the people of the city: “In their response to this madness they have elevated us all with their essential sense of goodness, community, and compassion.”

The words struck a chord. They captured not only the spirit of Oklahoma City but also the kind of organization Presti wanted to build. He wanted his players to see that they weren’t just playing basketball. They were representing a community of people who identified themselves by hard work, collaboration, and commitment to one another.

Today every new Thunder player and staff member visits the memorial upon arrival in Oklahoma City. It is a ritual that connects the team’s culture to the city’s values of resilience, unity, and community. By defining a mission that goes beyond the scoreboard, Presti has given people a way to measure success even when the numbers don’t go their way.

That same principle guides leaders in the business world. In our study, leaders of superteams were 59% more effective than average-team leaders at helping their teams understand why what they were doing was important. When people grasp how their work contributes to something larger, commitment deepens, collaboration strengthens, and the whole team moves forward together.

On opening night of the 2025–2026 season, 18 years after arriving in Oklahoma City, the members of the Thunder gathered at center court to receive their championship rings. Inside each ring were two engravings: Labor omnia vincit (Latin for “Work conquers all things,” Oklahoma’s state motto) and the number of every team member. Together the elements capture the values the organization has embraced from the beginning: collective effort, steady progress, and service that transcends self-interest.

The Thunder’s story is a reminder that success rarely comes from chasing outcomes. It grows out of the disciplined pursuit of continuous improvement. It originates in leaders who stay curious, ask hard questions, and roll up their sleeves when it matters most. It results from teams that experiment boldly, treat feedback as fuel, and find meaning in the work they share. Those are the habits that turn good teams into superteams. Any team can cultivate them, whether in basketball, business, or beyond.