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.

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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.

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