The Michigan Wolverines' Cultural Advantage
The impact of changing a team's culture
This team has been built upon culture. —Donovan Edwards (U-M Running Back)
I don’t know if I’ll ever get a culture like that in a team. We truly were a brotherhood. —Zak Zinter (U-M Offensive Lineman)
It’s essential for organizations to understand cultural issues during leadership changes. The following discusses this in the context of college sports and strategies for maintaining and building competitive advantages rooted in culture using the example of the University of Michigan’s football team, the Wolverines.
Takeaways:
Recruiting for Culture Fit: Jim Harbaugh hired assistant coaches and other personnel who enabled a more equitable distribution of power, reviving the culture and re-centering student-athletes.
Distributed Leadership: Flattening the team’s culture allowed the organization to become more agile and resilient to adversity, including personnel disruptions.
Players as Culture Creators: New traditions practiced by the football team, such as the Turnover Buffs ritual introduced by Will Johnson, demonstrate how students contributed to Team 144’s culture.
Vested Interests in Culture: Leadership by players fostered commitment to the team because student-athletes had vested interests in the culture they built.
A Return to Form: Elevating the agency of student-athletes revives the ethos of the earliest days of college sports and appears particularly well-suited to the changing landscape of college sports.
Developing a Cultural Strategy: Organizational culture consulting enables organizations like the Wolverines to maintain and build cultural advantages by addressing social and behavioral systems more strategically.
Culture, Beyond the Buzzword
The University of Michigan’s football team has won the 2024 National Championship. The Wolverines' success tends to be attributed, in large part, to the team's culture. Michigan's former head coach, Jim Harbaugh, is widely credited as the driving force behind the team's cultural revitalization. But what did he actually do? Culture is complicated and whenever it's mentioned in public discourse, it's usually talked about in vague, generic terms… vibes instead of social and behavioral science. So, let's use cultural anthropology to go beyond vibes and answer three questions:
How did Jim Harbaugh change the Michigan Wolverines' culture?
Why did this cultural change restore Michigan's football team to greatness?
What can other organizations learn from the Wolverines' success?
Using AI for Research
To explore these questions, we’ll use Ferret — an AI research assistant that’s designed for professional use. It allows us to ask research questions through a knowledge base that is robust enough for in-depth research. Ferret helps users analyze their own internal research materials as well as discover a myriad of vetted sources ranging from podcasts and research reports to expert interviews and bespoke datasets.
A Player-Led Culture
Jim Harbaugh created a culture at the University of Michigan that is notably different from the kind he experienced when he played quarterback for Coach Bo Schembechler in the 1980s. Schembechler's Wolverines were coach-led through a conventional hierarchy. Now, Michigan’s team is known for being uniquely player-led — a departure from Schembechler's team and others associated with what's often called the "old school" of college football.
Having a player-led culture doesn't mean coaches don't still lead their teams. Instead, they create and manage systems that empower players in ways that drive the team's success. Player-led cultures develop decision-making skills in the players and foster a sense of shared ownership in the team.
The most notable modern example of a more conventional, coach-led college football team is Nick Saban’s at the University of Alabama. The Crimson Tide was a perennial national championship contender during his tenure, which came to an end less than 48 hours after Michigan’s national championship victory. The last game Saban coached before retiring was a loss to Michigan in overtime at the Rose Bowl. Saban explained that his decision to retire was influenced by how college athletics is changing, alluding to the fact that the way he ran the Tide’s football program was misaligned with where the sport is heading. Michigan’s most recent championship team, known as Team #144, embodies a team culture and coaching style that are more aligned with where college football is going. To fill the coaching vacancy left by Saban, Alabama hired the University of Washington’s former coach, Kalen DeBoer. His Washington team lost to Michigan in the National Championship game the week after Michigan beat Saban’s.
Many of the ways Jim Harbaugh and his team created their unique player-led culture are visible only to insiders, but some of the most important factors are discussed by Ferret through an analysis of publicly available sources.
A Team Effort
Michigan's revitalization reached an inflection point when Jim Harbaugh hired several young, former student-athletes to assume leadership roles — particularly between 2019 and 2022. Harbaugh hired personnel into the Wolverines' football organization who were, in many ways, more similar to his players than they were to him. These new leaders allowed Harbaugh to flatten the team's culture by elevating the agency of its student-athletes.
Organizations with relatively flat cultures tend to foster more open communication and less emotional distance among members. This can be especially important at Michigan, where football players are elite athletes and full-time students in equally elite academic programs. In fact, several of Michigan's new hires during the team's revitalization were players at Michigan just a few years before they went back to work there. Unusually good rapport between players and the team's leadership likely led the coaches to trust players to take key roles in building the kind of culture that would lead to their success. This has become evident in various ways, including the close bonds among the players and their newest traditions.
New Rituals & Culture Creators
One of the Wolverine's most visible rituals is called the Turnover Buffs. This new tradition involves Michigan's defense taking a photo following a turnover by the opposing team, with the Wolverine who caused it wearing symbolically meaningful sunglasses. They are made by Cartier and known as "Buffs" because their frames are made of buffalo horn. They become popular in Detroit during the early 2000s and were introduced to the Wolverines in 2022 by a player named Will Johnson, who was a freshman at the time. This symbolic incentive for players, alongside increased emphasis on turnovers in the team's preparation for games, led to Team 144 becoming the most effective team at causing them in the country as measured by turnover margin.
The Wolverines are currently the only national championship team to finish their season first in this metric during the College Football Playoff era. Turnovers were a key component of Michigan's unique and historic run, including during Team 144’s last game. Washington had been particularly effective at scoring quickly throughout the season with explosive passing plays led by their quarterback, a Heisman runner-up named Michael Penix Jr. However, Michigan's defense made two crucial interceptions in the second half of the game. Will Johnson caused the first, shifting the momentum to Michigan when the Wolverines were up by a touchdown. The final score was 13 to 34, Michigan.
Rituals play a number of vital roles in the success of organizations and Johnson introduced the Buffs at a time when he was one of the youngest players on the team. Nonetheless, his idea has become an integral part of the team’s culture. He’s also capitalizing on this contribution through his own Turnover Buffs brand.
A Vested Interest in the Culture
In addition to creating new cultural practices, like the Turnover Buffs ritual, giving players significant roles in creating their team’s culture also fosters a sense of responsibility in it. Team 144 included a multitude of veteran players, many of whom will likely be NFL rookies soon. It’s easier than ever for student-athletes to leave their programs by transferring or going pro after a relatively short time on a college team. The Wolverines were able to retain their most experienced players and reach their stated goal of winning a national championship, in large part, because of the loyalty shared by cultural insiders. Team 144’s players were attached to the Wolverines' culture because they built it.
Distributed Leadership
Strong, relatively flat cultures also enable teams to be resilient to unexpected disruptions, including periods when key people at the helm of their organizations become unavailable. For example, Sherrone Moore was able to step in and lead the team to wins as head coach for the last three — most difficult — games of Michigan’s regular season when Jim Harbaugh was suspended by the Big Ten Conference. In terms of players, Michigan is notable in that there were no teammates who overshadowed the rest of the team. It’s usually the case that national championship teams have a player who finishes among the Top 3 Heisman finalists. For example, when the Crimson Tide won its most recent national championship in 2020, the team had a second runner-up in addition to the Heisman winner on its roster. It’s notable that Team 144, which is often characterized as being unselfish, did not have a Top 3 Heisman finalist because it’s also the most successful team in Wolverines’ history, with 15 wins and no losses.
The Value of Social Capital
Jim Harbaugh ultimately coached at the University of Michigan for nine years. The program’s unique value and meaning to Harbaugh led him to leave the NFL in 2015, where he was having success. At Michigan, he was given the time he needed to turn the Wolverines' football team around because he returned to his alma mater with an enormous amount of social capital based on the trust and expectations of Michigan’s cultural insiders. Many students and alumni believed that if the team could be revitalized, Jim Harbaugh would be the one to do it. This remained the case after the 2020 season when the team had 2 wins and 4 losses in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. He has demonstrated the real-world impact of changing a team’s culture but also how difficult it is. Managing systemic and structural issues like culture takes time and expertise. Michigan’s new head coach, Sherrone Moore, became the clear successor to Harbaugh following his coaching success during Harbaugh’s suspensions at the end of Michigan’s regular season. He now has to leverage the social capital he’s built with Michigan’s cultural insiders and fans to guide the program through its next transition.
Playing to Cultural Strengths
Harbaugh’s return to the University of Michigan was likely most surprising to people who are unfamiliar with its culture. While all universities have culture, some are more powerful than most. Harbaugh’s decision to leave the NFL and revitalize Michigan’s football program was driven, at least in part, by the attachment he feels to Michigan. The symbolic value of Michigan’s culture to insiders is an invaluable asset as the Wolverines continue to evolve. Leveraging it is easier said than done, but it is among the team’s most powerful competitive advantages. Institutions have cultural advantages beyond the attachments made by insiders, but these are even more difficult to understand and maintain. The Michigan Wolverines' culture will undoubtedly evolve as they transition from Harbaugh’s era to Moore’s, so fully understanding Team 144’s culture would be a time-sensitive initiative. This is because the most impactful aspects of an organization’s culture are often hidden in plain sight, overlooked by insiders, and missed during conventional succession planning. How U-M’s football team handles its culture moving forward will be a significant factor in whether Harbaugh’s legacy is defined by Team 144’s national championship, him laying the groundwork for a Moore Era defined by unprecedented success, or something in-between.
Lessons from Team 144
Creating and maintaining a player-led culture requires systems-thinking alongside decisive, inclusive, and innovative leadership from coaches, managers, and administrators. These senior leaders have to implement and manage systems that enable leadership to take place strategically and agilely throughout their organizations, from a CEO or coach to a new hire or freshman student-athlete. What matters is that leadership contributes to the team achieving its objectives. Creating Michigan’s unique culture was risky, but Harbaugh brought in the people who could help him build and use it most effectively. In Michigan’s case, the greatest risk was not taking one. When leaders operate within systems undergoing significant changes, conventional “tried and true” thinking often leads to failure. This is currently the case in college athletics and virtually every industry navigating the current era of unprecedented societal and technological change.
Team Cultures for a New Era
Jim Harbaugh demonstrated the importance of recruiting for culture fit. A program’s culture also needs to fit within broader institutions and systems that impact its success. Ultimately, if Michigan’s strategy includes leveraging the program’s apparent cultural advantages, the team will have to:
Understand Team 144’s culture and why it was successful.
Address the team’s cultural strengths and weaknesses intentionally.
Navigate cultural threats and seize cultural opportunities as they arise.
Success rooted in culture may appear to be self-sustaining, but it requires an especially profound understanding of social and behavioral systems so they can change in the ways that they need to change while preserving what shouldn’t. While the fundamental human needs met by elements of culture are timeless, the ways cultures meet them tend to evolve. Corporate leaders often seek out advice from applied anthropologists and management consultants to address these issues and they’re best understood through approaches that go beyond conventional change management. There’s clearly a need for the same kind of work in athletic programs like Michigan’s, particularly as they experience unprecedented institutional changes. In the context of college sports in the US, they include:
Collectives: Independent groups of fans and boosters who pool funds to support student-athletes through endorsement deals and other financial opportunities
Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL): Opportunities for college athletes to earn income from the use of their name, image, or likeness for endorsements, sponsorships, and business ventures
New Transfer Rules: Relaxed NCAA regulations that give student-athletes more freedom to transfer between schools without having to sit out a year of competition
Jim Harbaugh has been a vocal advocate for more equitable business practices in college sports and he has built the foundation for a uniquely diverse program that re-centers student-athletes. This began by bringing in the assistant coaches and other personnel who would build Team 144’s culture. For continued success in this area, it’s imperative that the Wolverines understand what made this unique culture so effective in specific and actionable terms. As the NCAA also begins to re-center student-athletes, Harbaugh’s model of leadership and culture-building appears to be the most viable. The so-called “old school” appears to be at risk of becoming obsolete — or culturally irrelevant — as college sports enter a new era. As the pace of cultural change accelerates, anthropologists may join psychologists in the most innovative programs. While behavioral sciences like sport psychology are best-suited for optimizing the well-being and performance of individuals, social sciences like organizational anthropology optimize the well-being and performance of teams, programs, and communities.
Everything Old Is New Again
Harbaugh flattened the power structure of the Wolverines' football organization through bold leadership at a time when the role of student-athletes in the US is fundamentally changing. The organization he and his team built at Michigan runs counter to what is usually described as the old school, but it revives the ethos of the earliest days of college sports. This was when students took it upon themselves to create a cultural phenomenon that would grow into an American institution. Before student-athletes were building their own brands and their coaches were making 8-figure salaries, college sports were student-led — because they had to be.
Organizational Culture Consulting
Although culture is a topic that is discussed from many perspectives, most of the methods used to understand it come from cultural anthropology. Survey research can give an understanding of what people think about their organizations. More qualitative methods like participant-observation and ethnographic interviews go deeper to explain why cultural insiders think and behave the way they do. As a result, anthropology and its methods are now embraced by management consultancies, including large firms like Deloitte and McKinsey & Co. They are often applied to address issues within the world’s most impactful corporations, where culture tends to be an especially complex and consequential topic. Anthropological perspectives are also well-suited to organizations seeking competitive advantages grounded in culture through:
Cultural Principals
Guidelines for building and maintaining effective cultures based on mixed-methods research, incl. participant-observation, surveys, expert interviews, stakeholder analyses, and unmoderated sessions
Cultural Playbooks
In-depth guides and content created in collaboration with teams that integrate cultural principles and additional research with stakeholders, incl. co-ideation, participatory co-design, and group workshops
Cultural Roadmaps
Strategic planning that integrates cultural principles and playbooks with landscape analyses of macro-level shifts to find emerging opportunities, threats, and competitive advantages
Addressing cultural issues is crucial to the Wolverines football program if maintaining its cultural advantage is a priority, but also to the men’s basketball team as it undergoes its own transition. While cultural problems are reportedly an underlying cause of the basketball team’s recent challenges, Michigan’s football program has the challenge of understanding, maintaining, and building on its unique cultural advantages. U-M’s football and men’s basketball programs demonstrate the impact of organizational culture on the success of sports teams. And the value of cultural consulting to athletic programs is becoming more apparent as the cultural landscape of college sports evolves.