The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

by Bill Walsh

Bill Walsh was not afraid of talent. He hired assistant coaches who were extremely good, and he did it with the expectation that they would move on—up to head coaching positions. And in fact, about fifteen of them did. He didn’t feel that you sold your soul to the company store. While you were a 49er, you were expected to give it your all, but Bill was very enlightened in the way he supported the lives and careers of employees beyond just what they could do for his team.

I saw him work himself so hard over those ten years, and the toll was increasingly terrible. It didn’t have to be. Bill just had so much trouble letting up, getting out from under the increasingly crushing pressure of expectations that got sky-high as the decade rolled on. Burnout is what they call it, I guess; but who can argue with success?

The West Coast Offense, considered by many to be one of the most dramatic changes in football during the last fifty years,

(The width of a football field is much greater than most fans appreciate—- 53.3 yards. I used all of that width, slightly less than half the length of an NFL field, in designing plays, thus turning the approximately 15 yards of depth—Virgil’s most effective range—and 53.3 yards of width into a wide-open war zone being hit not by long bombs but short ones. At least, that was the plan.)

I had spotted an unsung but promising quarterback at Minnesota’s Augustana College, Ken Anderson.

In a sense, the naysayers were seeking victory, but only if it came the old-fashioned way.

Ironically, in San Francisco’s first Super Bowl appearance we played Cincinnati. Their quarterback, Ken Anderson, threw for 300 yards with twenty-five completions, two touchdowns, and a 73.5 percent completion rate. Both the number of completions and percentage rate set Super Bowl records.

Paul Brown, a man who had aggressively worked to prevent me from ever becoming a head coach in the NFL.

One executive summed it up like this: “It’s not real NFL football.” He viewed it as gimmicky, smoke and mirrors, neither substantive nor long-lasting.

Eddie Cochems, head coach at Saint Louis University, immediately and enthusiastically embraced the new alternative to always running the ball. In 1906 his team went 11-0 and outscored opponents 407-11.

Success doesn’t care which road you take to get to its doorstep.

Be bold. Remove fear of the unknown—that is, change—from your mind.

Desperation should not drive innovation.

Be obsessive in looking for the upside in the downside.

Among his gifts, Paul Brown was a perceptive, astute, and shrewd listener who did not fear change.

Paul Brown, for all of his gifts, was not inclined to give credit for the new ideas I was bringing to his team. For a period of time, many on the outside assumed he was the one putting pencil to paper as architect of an emerging paradigm for offensive football in the NFL. He did not go out of his way to dissuade them; giving credit where credit was due was not something he liked to do, at least with me.

Few things offer greater return on less investment than praise—offering credit to someone in your organization who has stepped up and done the job.

When I was the quarterback coach with the Cincinnati Bengals, this led me to start planning our first four offensive plays before the opening kickoff.

In fact, during my second season, Stanford scored on our first possession eight times in eleven games. Typically during a season a team might score once or twice on the initial drive of a game.

At San Francisco our first twenty or twenty-five plays of the game would be scripted, along with a multitude of options, alternatives, and contingency plays depending on the situation and circumstance.

I was the first to employ scripting to this extent, and it gave us a stunning tactical offensive asset that no other teams were utilizing at that time.

With the 49ers I began asking my offensive coaches to give me their twenty-five scripted plays; then I’d revise and add my own to their ideas.

Planning even one day ahead was usually much better than trying to make a decision in the heat of the contest amid the clatter and chaos.

Scripting did not lock me into a play or series of plays.

Rarely did we go straight by the numbers, one through twenty-five. Usually it would be more like one through four; seven through ten; back to five and six; then perhaps a play from page three of my laminated sheets on the clipboard.

“swinging at shadows,”

When you’re thorough in your preparation—“scripting” is a part of it—you can almost go on automatic pilot and reduce the chance of making emotional and ill-considered decisions. Scripting allowed me to take randomness and stress out of the decision-making process.

Nevertheless, it’s a macho attitude to believe, “I’m at my best when all hell breaks loose.” But it’s usually not true; you cannot think as clearly or perform as well when engulfed by stress, anxiety, fear, tension, or turmoil. You are not at your best. Believing you are creates a false sense of confidence that can lead to slipshod preparation. You think, “Don’t worry, I’ll be able to put it all together when it counts. I can just turn it on.” When it counts is before all hell breaks loose.

He publicly bragged about his attack on Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski: “I hit Jaworski . . . with an over-the-head ax job. I thought his dick was going to drop in the dirt.”

Often it takes a keen eye and a strong stomach to dig through the “ruins” of your results for meaningful facts.

In Jack’s senior year at the University of Tennessee, the Vols clinched the Southeastern Conference title but then lost a chance to play in the Sugar Bowl by losing to Mississippi State 38-0. Jack was so furious about the loss that he went to Kmart and bought a hacksaw and twenty blades. He then proceeded to saw his ’53 Chevy completely in half. It took a couple of days, but when he finished, Jack Reynolds had a new name.

What Bill Walsh did is easy to describe: (1) He could identify problems that needed to be solved; and (2) He could solve them.

Those he allowed to remain he allowed to thrive—letting guys like Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott influence others in their own positive and individual ways without Bill telling them how they should do it.

One head coach (briefly), Pete McCulley, was from the East Coast, and when he came to San Francisco to take over the 49ers he stayed on East Coast time—didn’t change his watch. When he told us to be at work at 7 A.M., he was talking about 7 A.M. on the East Coast!

During one game, our linebacker coach, Dan Radakovich, a talented guy who had worked with Chuck Noll’s great Pittsburgh Steelers teams, got so upset with how San Francisco was playing that he went up into the stands and sat with his wife.

Our management didn’t trust anybody, locked everything up. To get to your office you needed four sets of keys—a key to get into the building, a key to go down the hall, a key to get to your office, a key to get into the bathroom.

Marv Levy was not the only guy—just the first guy—along the way who failed to see the brilliance in what Bill was coming up with.

He would ask me to get up and “teach” my offensive techniques to a defensive coach, who would play the part of a student—a player. Bill would critique us, teach us how to communicate better and better so that the players would be more fully informed. No other coach in the NFL was coaching his coaches like this. And it was serious business with him.

Unless you’re a guard on a chain gang, others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations.

Switzer’s continuing freewheeling lifestyle, habits, and behavior—he was generally viewed as a “good ol’ boy”—did not command the respect necessary to keep superstar quarterback Troy Aikman, Hall of Fame running back Emmett Smith, and other outstanding Dallas performers functioning as a cohesive, dedicated, and overpowering football team. Things gradually began to erode.

Plus, he favored the “buddy system” approach to coaching; he had favorites among the players, and everybody knew it. Of course, those who weren’t “buddies” inevitably began to feel like second-class citizens, which usually leads to the creation of a second-class organization.

Mike Holmgren’s Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XXXI, and he’s been very successful as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks; before that he was one of my assistant coaches at San Francisco, so I know him pretty well. Here’s my capsule description of Mike: He is thoughtful, intelligent, and assertive—an excellent teacher who, beneath his surface appearance of being amenable and open to everything, absolutely knows what he wants and gets it; and everybody in his organization understands that. Mike is unswerving in moving toward his goal.

Jimmy Johnson won a national championship as head coach of the University of Miami Hurricanes and two consecutive Super Bowl championships at Dallas. Here’s my description of Jimmy: a smart guy with an exuberant personality who brought in outstanding people and delegated well. He was not the technical football expert that Landry was, but a better salesman.

Holmgren seemingly amenable and flexible,

Johnson like Robert Preston in The Music Man—exuberant and lively.

They simply would not quit in their effort to install their own system, to push forward with their plan, not someone else’s or a committee’s.

The difference between offering an opinion and making a decision is the difference between working for the leader and being the leader.

Years ago, the executives at Coca-Cola decided to replace classic Coke with a new version of it. Tests seemed to suggest that the new flavor was favored by potential buyers over the time-tested Coke that had become a worldwide brand and a proven phenomenon. Coca-Cola went ahead and replaced it—took the classic Coke off shelves worldwide—amid great fanfare. The sales results were not good. In fact, it was a fiasco. But those same executives, committed as they were to the new product and having spent tens of millions of dollars on it, recognized “their way” was the wrong way. New Coke was introduced in April and taken off the shelves in July.

A leader must be keen and alert to what drives a decision, a plan of action. If it was based on good logic, sound principles, and strong belief, I felt comfortable in being unswerving in moving toward my goal. Any other reason (or reasons) for persisting were examined carefully. Among the most common faulty reasons are (1) trying to prove you are right and (2) trying to prove someone else is wrong. Of course, they amount to about the same thing and often lead to the same place: defeat.

A leader must have a vision, which is simply an elevated word for “goal.”