Management Secrets of the Red Army Hockey Team

It might annoy hardcore capitalists, but an impartial observer has got to admit that Soviet ice hockey must rank as one of the great management successes of all time. Starting with nothing, not even artificial ice—in the summer, the team headed for the Arctic—and in many cases, barely with skates or sticks, the Russians built a hockey program that dominated international competition from the 1960s through the '80s. When the Soviets sent their team to play the best players in America's National Hockey League in 1979, the Soviet team handily won the three-game series. The Red Army, as the team was known, medaled in nine straight Olympics, including seven golds, through 1988.

This wasn't a triumph of equipment, or money, or even good luck. It was a problem solved with theories about how people organize themselves and how they think about talent. Gabe Polsky has put together a movie about the program. It's called, of course, Red Army, and it opens today, Jan. 23. When it's put to him that his movie might have something to teach not only a coach but also a director, or an executive, or anyone else running a group, Polsky answers as if he'd been thinking about it all along.