I’ve been thinking about halftimes recently, and not just because of the calendar. Avid fan that I am, I followed the Golden State Warriors earlier this month as it became National Basketball Association champions once again. One thing the Warriors excelled at was surging at the start of the second half. A New York Times article by Mark Stein and Scott Cacciola reveals what happens during halftime that helps the Warriors do so well. Some of those techniques might help your remodeling company.

Here are excerpts from the article--written while the Warriors were in the conference finals against the Houston Rockets--followed by comments from me.

The 15 minutes between the end of the second quarter and start of the third are a carefully choreographed production, featuring clips of game footage, wardrobe changes and managerial strategies straight out of business school. Coach Steve Kerr, based on interviews with players and coaches, has worked to create an environment of inclusion. This is not a place for Lombardi-esque rah-rah speeches. Rather, the Warriors’ halftime locker room is a high-speed 360-degree team review.

Now how the environment is inclusive. That is the foundation for a great mid-job break for those trying to get a remodeling project done on time and on budget with a client who becomes raving fan of the company. Remodeling companies typically do job completion review (often called a “job autopsy”) at the end of the project, looking back and not forward regarding that project.

The Warriors actually begin preparing for halftime as soon as the game begins. Assistant coaches will identify plays that the team may want to review at halftime by signaling them to Willie Green, an assistant and 11-year N.B.A. veteran who sits one row behind the bench. Green is in charge of keeping track of the time and score for each of the plays in question.

Paying attention to choices made and actions taken during a project--and doing it outside the craziness of getting the work done--creates a foundation for continuous improvement, not just on the current project but all those going forward. All can be involved in noting such items.

Once the first half ends, the coaches spend three or four minutes talking among themselves. At home, that happens in the coaches’ office adjacent to the locker room. On the road, they improvise. For example, when they were in Houston for Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, they met in the hallway outside the visiting locker room because the coaches’ quarters were so cramped.

Bruce Fraser, an assistant coach, described these sessions as think-tankish: Kerr solicits input from his staff, then listens. Sometimes, though, he takes advantage of the opportunity to vent, which is partly by design. By ridding himself of his frustrations, Kerr can act like a more rational human once he appears in front of his players.

The coaching staff complains to one another. Kerr vents so he can become a better communicator with his players instead of demotivating them.

Think about a typical remodeling project. Does the company owner, production manager and/or lead carpenter have ANY planned opportunities to vent? The only ones I can think of are over an adult beverage at the end of the day or with their significant other.

This is a missed opportunity. Great members of a remodeling company care passionately about the success of a project. With that passion comes the need to vent.

Once Kerr has a good grasp of the material he wants to cover with the team, he and the rest of the coaches enter the locker room with about 11 minutes left before the start of the third quarter. Kerr does not obsessively check the clock. He chooses to keep time by feel.

Kerr is the first coach to address the team—"Steve makes, in a brief way, sense of what just happened, good or bad,” Fraser said—before the clips that [were] collected in the first half are projected onto a large screen. Kerr runs through them.

The leader needs to set a positive tone. That could be the production manager or the lead carpenter. By focusing on what can be learned from the past so that going forward the team can wrap up the project more successfully, all involved are engaged and part of the solution. No one is upset and shut down.

But [Kerr] trusts his staff so much that he does not need to know in advance which clips Laughlin and his assistants have selected for the halftime show. Kerr’s staff members seem to have an intuitive understanding of the types of plays he will want to highlight.

During the first half of Game 7 against the Rockets, the Warriors played so poorly their assistant coaches kept simultaneously shouting, “Clip that!” whenever the team had a decent possession. They knew that Kerr, who loves to emphasize the positive, would want to show the players those plays at halftime. When he did, the sequences reinforced the message that good things happened whenever they moved the ball, and reminded the players at a fragile moment that they were better than the 11-point deficit suggested.

Kerr knows that his team will perform better if he focuses on what went well and not on what did not.

This is different from how a mid-project break might go on a remodeling project. Often the conversation is all about what went badly and how to deal with the unfortunate results.

Yes, such issues need to be addressed but it is very important to put a great focus on what has gone well. That leaves all involved more motivated as they work to get the rest of the project done right.

[Kerr asks of the players] “Do you have anything for us?” he asks them. “Do you see anything?”

Like the Warriors organization itself, the halftime locker room is, above all, an open forum.

“He is the authority based on title,” Fraser said of Kerr, “but our culture is by community. He’s one of them. He doesn’t look at himself as a figure that they have to defer to.”

The leader of the remodeling project will get better results from those working with them if the leader asks for input and respects whatever they hear. Talking through what went well and what could have gone better halfway through the project ratchets up everyone engagement going forward.

Perhaps the most amazing feature of the Warriors’ halftime routine is its brevity. Kerr tries to wrap up his whole spiel with about seven minutes showing on the clock—six minutes at the latest. He knows the players want to get back on the court to take some warm-up shots. He also probably knows there is only so much he can say.

As with so many things, “more” is often not better than “just enough.” As a leader, knowing when to stop making suggestions and leaving your team to go do what will only get done if they do it is an art. Owners, production managers and lead carpenters who have this skill get better engagement from the employees they work with and therefore the company experiences greater success.

What’s next has become utterly predictable to fans, opponents and even the Warriors themselves: hope-destroying scoring runs that tend to erase any memories—and any deficits—of the first half.

What comes next in your projects mid-way through a project? Would the company become more successful by stopping for a short break to review what the team needs to do more of and what it needs to stop doing?

What is at stake for the Warriors is one game. What is at stake for a remodeling company when doing a challenging project can sometimes be the future of the company.

All working on the project want to make it a win. Looking back mid-project can make that more likely to happen.

There is only one way to find out: Give it a shot.