The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

by Bill Walsh

show self-control, especially where it counts mos...

use positive language and have a posi...

take pride in my effort as an entity separate from the res...

Important for evaluating okrs

be willing to go the extra distance for th...

deal appropriately with victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation (don’t get crazy with victory ...

promote internal communication that is both open...

Patience and constructive criticism

seek poise in myself and th...

put the team’s welfare and priorities ah...

Provide your team with the means to act autonomously and in line with your culture such that the company is self propelling and your can take care of your personal welfare

maintain an ongoing level of concentration and focus that ...

Stamina builds over time like any other strength...start small and build it up...

make sacrifice and commitment the organizati...

Not at the expense of my teams welfare though

Much of this may seem trivial to you, but it adds up and changes the environment.

It starts with attitude and standards, creating an environment that instills desirable habits and behaviors,setting cultural expectations that support it, and demonstrating it as a leader

he was looking at perfection; perfection was what was in his mind when he entered the arena.

Envision it, and act it until you believe it and until you achieve it; live it all the way

That “perfect” appearance—“appropriate appearance” is more accurate—applied to others in the organization as well, because it is part of the motif that directs thinking into a mode I view as conducive to high performance.

After careful analysis, they identified thirty specific and separate physical skills—actions—that every offensive lineman needed to master in order to do his job at the highest level,

Analyze your rivals, your competition, the best in the game. Plan your actions and practice execution.this is only way to perform at a high level

routine “perfection.”

High performance becomes the standard...established and practiced over time (doesn't come overnight, require diligence and patience)

I made it clear that he or she was 100 percent a member of our team,

And expected to perform their job with 100% effort and execution; demands respect for every contributing member of the organization

From the start, my prime directive, the fundamental goal, was the full and total implementation throughout the organization of the actions and attitudes of the Standard of Performance

Cultural...trumps everything else...

I had very profound and organization-changing goals,

Okrs require timing! Some objectives cannot precede others...Here, making wins by certain dates the objective with key results about performance is difficult to state with confidence when the team has no systems (has not built the culture) that can accomplish such okrs...

plan for installing a level of proficiency—competency—at which our production level would become higher in all areas, both on and off the field, than that of our opponents.

Becoming more proficient, increasing readiness and capability to make the most of opportunity, to leverage small advantages!

I focused our personnel on the details of my Standard of Performance—trying to achieve it—rather than how we measured up against a given team

we were immersed in building the inventory of skills, both attitudinal and physical, that would lead to improved execution.

obsessing, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude.

The bull-headed know-it-all is a destructive force on your team.

I sought individuals who had the ability to work with others.

Look for Adam grants " givers and takers" and seek to build an organization of givers

I was insisting that all employees not only raise their level of “play” but dramatically lift the level of their thinking—how they perceived their relationship to the team and its members;

Everybody was connected, each of us an extension of the others, each of us with ownership in our organization. I taught this just as you should teach it in your own organization.

this organizational perception that “success belongs to everyone” is taught by the leader.

Likewise, failure belongs to everyone.

We are united and fight as one; we win or lose as one.

the concept of what a team is all about at its best: connection and extension.

“You can’t let your buddies down. Demand and expect sacrifice from yourself, and they’ll do the same for you.”

Setting expectations cultural among team members across and up and down your organization...lead by example, manage by example, execute by example

when you know that your peers—the others in the organization—demand and expect a lot out of you and you, in turn, out of them, that’s when the sky’s the limit.

Mutual commitment to excellence is key...coherence and shared values, vision...built into the culture...communicated, demonstrated, lived by the leader

As he matured as an on-court leader, he made everyone part of the victory.

The leader’s job is to facilitate a battlefield-like sense of camaraderie among his or her personnel, an environment for people to find a way to bond together, to care about one another and the work they do, to feel the connection and extension so necessary for great results.

People want to believe they’re part of something special, an organization that’s exceptional. And that’s the environment I was creating in the early months and years at San Francisco.

my Standard of Performance would produce that kind of mind set, an organizational culture that would subsequently be the foundation for winning games.

The culture precedes positive results.

Champions behave like champions before they’re champions; they have a winning standard of perform...

an organization is like an automobile assembly line; it must be first class or the cars that come off it will be second rate. The exceptional assembly line comes first, before the quality car.

Before you can win the fight, you’ve got to be in the fight.

Achieving success takes patience, time, and fortitude.

This consistency of excellence and preeminence is difficult to achieve in professional sports—and equally hard in business.

the Standard of Performance served as a compass that pointed to true north. It embraced the individual requirements and expectations—benchmarks—required of our personnel in all areas regardless of whether things were going well or badly.

Leader sets the North star for the organization and gathers the means to get there

“consistent effort is a consistent challenge.”

The challenge to keep people focused and motivated at all times in the life of an organization

the Standard of Performance. It was our point of reference, what we always returned

to when things wobbled—deeply

I envisioned it as enabling us to establish a near-permanent “base camp” near the summit,

I had to drastically change the environment, raise the level of talent, and teach everyone what they needed to know to get to where I wanted us to go.

It also meant that as the years accrued, personnel had to be changed so that we remained near the summit.

Getting the right people on and off the bus to gain momentum and bring base camp closer to the peak

the organization, our team, came first.