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by
Bill Walsh
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October 20 - November 10, 2021
his ability to teach people how to think and play at a different and much higher, and, at times, perfect level. He accomplished this in three ways: (1) he had a tremendous knowledge of all aspects of the game and a visionary approach to offense; (2) he brought in a great staff and coaches who knew how to coach, how to complement his own teaching of what we needed to know to rise to his standard of performance; and (3) he taught us to hate mistakes.
They might help you get the idea. When I put all the pieces together, it looked complicated, but each piece is simple. Most big things are simple in the specific, much less so in the general.”
Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called “failure.”
Those executives in the audience recognize there is a significant price to pay to be the best. That price is not something they laugh at.
When knocked down, you must get up; you must stand and fight.
Failure is part of success, an integral part. Everybody gets knocked down. Knowing it will happen and what you must do when it does is the first step back.
MY FIVE DOS FOR GETTING BACK INTO THE GAME: 1. Do expect defeat. It’s a given when the stakes are high and the competition is working ferociously to beat you. If you’re surprised when it happens, you’re dreaming; dreamers don’t last long. 2. Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional “train wreck” you have just been in. It’s mental quicksand. 3. Do allow yourself appropriate recovery—grieving—time. You’ve been knocked senseless; give yourself a little time to recuperate. A keyword here is “little.” Don’t let it drag on. 4. Do tell yourself, “I am going to stand
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I arrived with an urgent timetable for installing an agenda of specific behavioral norms—actions and attitudes—that applied to every single person on our payroll.
For me to do this I had to have autonomy, the power to quickly make decisions in all relevant areas. Team owner Eddie DeBartolo understood this and named me general manager soon after I became head coach. Equally important, he let everyone in the organization know that I was the boss and that he would not undercut my authority.
My Standard of Performance—the values and beliefs within it—guided everything I did in my work at San Francisco and are defined as follows: Exhibit a ferocious and intelligently applied work ethic directed at continual improvement; demonstrate respect for each person in the organization and the work he or she does; be deeply committed to learning and teaching, which means increasing my own expertise; be fair; demonstrate character; honor the direct connection between details and improvement, and relentlessly seek the latter; show self-control, especially where it counts most—under pressure;
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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 I described earlier. This was radical in the sense that winning is the usual prime directive in professional football and most businesses.
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.
You may remember basketball’s Michael Jordan being interviewed after a game. The Chicago Bull would tell the media, “Scotty Pippen did a great job on defense; Dennis [Rodman] got a couple of key rebounds, and our bench really picked up the slack in the third quarter to give us a little breather. It was a great effort by everybody.” What Jordan didn’t mention might be the fact that he had scored fifty-five points, grabbed fifteen rebounds, and had twelve assists. As he matured as an on-court leader, he made everyone part of the victory.
The culture precedes positive results. It doesn’t get tacked on as an afterthought on your way to the victory stand. Champions behave like champions before they’re champions; they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners.
Start with a comprehensive recognition of, reverence for, and identification of the specific actions and attitudes relevant to your team’s performance and production. 2. Be clarion clear in communicating your expectation of high effort and execution of your Standard of Performance.
Let all know that you expect them to possess the highest level of expertise in their area of responsibility. 4. Beyond standards and methodology, teach your beliefs, values, and philosophy.
Teach “connection and extension.”
Make the expectations and metrics of competence that you demand in action and attitudes from personnel the new reality of your organization.
Rather, I was looking at a situation that had little going for it and trying to get something going. I was forced to be innovative to a degree I didn’t foresee.
It was born of necessity, bred of innovation and creativity applied to existing—and so-called limited—assets.
They were locked into the past and unwittingly locking themselves out of the future. Leaders do this to themselves and their organizations all the time.
Success doesn’t care which road you take to get to its doorstep. The traditionalists—rigid and resistant in their thinking—who sneered at the new passing system I was creating were soon trying to figure out why it was beating them and how to copy it.
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. My
Unfortunately, too often we find comfort in what worked before—even when it stops working. We get stuck there and resist the new, the unfamiliar, the unconventional.
When I became a head coach, the leader of my own organization, I tried to avoid his mistake and attempted to give ample credit to those working 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.
By analyzing, planning, and rehearsing in advance you can make a rational decision, the best choice for the situation at hand. And that still leaves room for those gut-instinct decisions you may want to make.
Planning for the future shouldn’t be postponed until the future arrives.
Planning for foul or fair weather, “scripting” as it applies to your organization, improves the odds of making a safe landing and is a key to success. When you prepare for everything, you’re ready for anything.
All personnel must recognize that your organization is adaptive and dynamic in facing unstable “weather.” It is a state of mind. Situations and circumstances change so quickly in football or business that no one can afford to get locked into one way of doing things. You must take steps to prepare employees to be flexible when the situation and circumstances warrant it.
Every leader does year-end reviews and comes to conclusions of one sort or another. My observation is that two leaders—coaches—looking at the same information will not see the same thing. The one who’s a more skilled analyst, who digs deeper and wider, will benefit more. It is an endeavor to which I allocated as much energy as my preparation for every game and opponent.
others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations.
We have, however, seen a move away from the dictatorial type of leadership, an approach that didn’t fit me and that I do not think is conducive to long-term success, especially in a corporate setting. You may get results for a week or a few months, but the cumulative effects of bullying people, creating an environment of ongoing fear, panic, and intimidation, are a situation where employees become increasingly tuned out and immune to all of your noise. And, of course, the talented ones look for a job with a better outfit.
The lesson I took from it was this: 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.
checklist worth keeping in mind when it comes to persevering, to doing it “your way” at all costs: 1. A leader must never quit. 2. A leader must know when to quit. 3. Proving that you are right or proving that someone is wrong are bad reasons for persisting. 4. Good logic, sound principles, and strong belief are the purest and most productive reasons for pushing forward when things get rough.
My battle cry was “Beat ’em to the punch!” which I repeated over and over to coaches and players through the years. It meant, “Hurt your opponents before they hurt you. Strike first.”
Another was “Commit, explode, recover (if you’re wrong)!” which was shorthand for having a plan of attack, executing it suddenly and powerfully, and then reacting quickly and intelligently to the results of what you’ve done. It was a way of thinking and performing, a philosophy—my philosophy, my approach to competing. It, too, was soon part of our organization’s vernacular and attitude.
Whether it’s sports, sales, management, or almost any other competitive context, consistent motivation usually comes from a consuming desire to be able to perform at your best under pressure, namely, the pressure produced by tough competition.
The lesson I had learned in fumbling through the earlier strike was useful this time around; namely, don’t assume because of odd circumstances that everything will somehow sort itself out. Rather, play for keeps all the time. The clock never stops running; there is never a “time-out” when what you do is somehow less meaningful.
From time to time, leaders must show this hard edge. They must make those around them somewhat uneasy, even ill at ease, in not knowing what to expect from you, the leader. The knowledge that there is this hardness inside you can have a very sobering effect on those who might otherwise be sloppy—those who occasionally need to be reminded of your policies and practices.
Employees can thrive in an environment where they know exactly what is expected of them—even when those expectations are very high.
When it comes to telling people what you expect from them, don’t be subtle, don’t be coy, don’t be vague. What is your version of, “Gentlemen, this is a football”?
(When asked if Lombardi gave his stars special treatment, Jordan replied, “No. He treats us all the same—like dogs.”)
An individual doesn’t need to be an expert to ask an intelligent question or offer useful insights.
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, called it “boundaryless” communication and worked hard to remove barriers to the flow of information within the corporation. Everybody is in the loop and expected to participate.
Sometimes you snarl; sometimes you bite; sometimes you smile and give a thumbs-up. There’s a little bit of the actor in all good leaders.
Leadership, at its best, is exactly that: teaching skills, attitudes, and goals (yes, goals are both defined and taught) to individuals who are part of your organization.
Passion is not just having a desire to do the job of teaching.
Expertise is the inventory of knowledge and experience you possess on a particular subject.
