The Score Takes Care of Itself (16 page)

Of course, it’s an easy trap to fall into, because the trivialities I noted are typical of what a desperate leader can grab onto and
control
when everything seems out of control. It creates a false and fatal sense of accomplishment, a trap with serious consequences because it keeps you from addressing the key thoughts and solutions, the tough decisions that are at the core of accomplishing a very difficult task; that is, the task of turning things around.

As a leader, when you find yourself with a host of problems that seemingly defy solution and start dwelling on the least relevant or even irrelevant aspects of your job—constantly sitting on the phone with nonessential conversations, doing endless e-mailing, writing memo after memo, fiddling around getting all your pencils sharpened and lined up perfectly, being excessively concerned about hurting feelings and trying to make sure everyone is comfortable, straightening out your desk drawer, getting wrapped up in the details of the annual Christmas party, and a million other kinds of stupid busywork, tell yourself this: “There’ll be plenty of time for pencils, parties, and socializing when I lose my job, because that’s what’s going to happen if I continue to avoid the hard and harsh realities of doing my job.”

And that’s exactly what happened to the coach of the Seattle Seahawks. Just like George Allen, he was fired, in spite of the fact that his team could sing the national anthem better than any other outfit in the NFL.

Sharpening pencils in lieu of sharpening your organization’s performance is one way to lose your job. Here are ten additional nails you can pound into your professional coffin:

For leaders in all professions, including coaches in the NFL, looking for relief from the high anxieties, deep frustrations, and toxic emotions that go with the job can lead you to do everything
but
your job—worrying about issues of lesser and lesser relevance with greater and greater consequences.

The tangential aspects of your job become attractive because they’re monumentally easier to control than what you’re there to do; specifically, to create high performance; this is the toughest part to live with, concentrate on, and control. You use the peripheral stuff as an escape mechanism, rather than tackling what may appear, and indeed may be, unsolvable problems until finally you’re done, finished, sitting there with nothing to show for your leadership efforts but a cup of sharp pencils.

The trademark of a well-led organization in sports or business is that it’s virtually self-sustaining and self-directed—almost autonomous. To put it in a more personal way, if your staff doesn’t seem fully mobilized and energized until you enter the room, if they require your presence to carry on at the level of effort and excellence you have tried to install, your leadership has not percolated down.

Ideally, you want your Standard of Performance, your philosophy and methodology, to be so strong and solidly ingrained that in your absence the team performs as if you were present, on site. They’ve become so proficient, highly mobilized, and well prepared that in a sense you’re extraneous; everything you’ve preached and personified has been integrated and absorbed; roles have been established and people are able to function at a high level because they understand and believe in what you’ve taught them, that is, the most effective and productive way of doing things accompanied by the most productive attitude while doing them. Fundamentally sound actions and attitudes are the keys.

Consequently, I was very pleased when I began overhearing 49er coaches repeating my ideas to one another and subsequently to our players. Later, when I heard the players using my terms or phrases—my personal dialogue or choice of words that represented concepts and ideas—I knew that I’d made a connection, that my leadership had percolated down. (Of course, seeing it produce an improving won-lost record was better evidence.)

This is extremely important because an organization is crippled if it needs to ask the leader what to do every time a question arises. I didn’t want an organizational psyche of leadership dependency, of being semi-dysfunctional without me around making every decision. Here are specific examples in which my leadership philosophy percolated down.

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.” It was like a mantra of competition for me. Soon I was hearing it repeated by others. I saw it on the field as the 49ers became known for establishing an early lead, which, of course, changed the dynamics of a game in our favor.

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.

“Four-minute offense” meant we were ahead late in the game and wanted to take time off the clock, avoid penalties, not go out of bounds, control the ball, and more. When that situation arose, I didn’t have to say anything. Players would be shouting it to each other: “Four-minute offense! Four-minute offense!” It was satisfying to hear because it meant they had come to understand and embrace what I was teaching.

I instructed our maintenance crew to put up a white five-foot-square grease board with “I WILL NOT BE OUTHIT ANY TIME THIS SEASON!” printed in bold letters across the top. I got out my Magic Marker and signed it—“Bill Walsh.” Then everybody on the team signed it. It was a frame of mind, an attitude that I sought to instill.

“I will not be outhit any time this season!” was about the physical aspect of the profession, but also about the mental and emotional—a state of mind. And everybody on the team literally signed up for it—a contract. This, too, was soon in the air, repeated, absorbed, part of our DNA.

My leadership had percolated down and had begun taking on a life of its own. It went beyond my phrases, of course, and included everything from offensive and defensive schemes to the precision and professionalism applied to all matters in training camp and the regular season. And much more.

Ultimately, you hope your ideas and way of doing things become so strongly entrenched that the organization performs as effectively without you as with you. That’s the goal and, in fact, it happened to me.

When I retired as head coach of the 49ers following our victory in Super Bowl XXIII, the organization moved forward without a hitch and continued its dominance for years. Why? In part because my leadership philosophy had become ingrained within the San Francisco 49ers.

It takes nothing away from my successor George Seifert’s coaching nor the great abilities of his coaching staff to suggest that my Standard of Performance had become so ingrained with the 49ers during my decade of teaching that when I retired they were able to practice, prepare, and perform at the same level of excellence—higher, in fact—as during my final season.

This is a reliable indication of an effective leader, namely, one who creates a self-sustaining organization able to operate at the highest levels even when he or she leaves.

The responsible leader of any company or corporation aggressively seeks to ensure its continued prosperity. It’s the mark of a forward-thinking leadership. A strong company that goes south after the CEO retires is a company whose recently departed CEO didn’t finish the job. If everything goes great when you’re around but slows or stops in its tracks when you’re not there, you are not fulfilling your responsibilities. Your leadership has not percolated down.

Demonizing the competition is a common but contrived method for stirring up emotions. We see it used in sports (most frequently), business, or war to motivate people, to light a fire under them. Coaches will attempt to incite players by reminding them that the upcoming opponent “wants to embarrass us on
Monday Night Football
; wants to make us look like fools in front of the whole goddamn country!” or “is trying to take away your job so you won’t be able to send your kids to a good school,” or a laundry list of other supposedly incendiary but usually silly declarations. (The “genius” tag the media put on me was used in this way occasionally by coaches to stir up their teams, to demonize me.)

I generally preferred the opposite approach in characterizing the other team and its players. To me they were objects that were both faceless and nameless: Nameless, Faceless Objects.

My logic was that I wanted our focus directed at one thing only: going about our business in an intensely efficient and professional manner—first on the practice field, later on the playing field. I felt that moving attention away from that goal to create artificial and manufactured “demons” was artificial and usually nonproductive, especially when done repeatedly (as is usually the case with those who like the technique).

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. If a player needed me to light a fire under him by turning the other team into a demon, he was lacking something I couldn’t give him. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule.

On some occasions I would resort to the “demonizing” tactic to spark life into a player or group of players who for unknown reasons were flat. Keep in mind, I used this device intermittently and unpredictably, which is exactly why it worked. When I launched into a demonizing speech, the players didn’t just roll their eyes and think, “Oh, boy, there goes Walsh again, trying to get us fired up.” Here’s an example of the way I would use it, although the circumstances were unique.

On the bus ride from our hotel to Giants Stadium for a game against the New York Giants, the energy was flat, the players’ voices not just subdued but nearly silent, almost eerily silent. I became increasingly uncomfortable with what I sensed from my seat at the front of the bus. Was it complacency, lack of confidence, or something else? Regardless of the cause, the effect could be a disaster in just a few hours. So I decided it was time to manufacture a demon.

Leaning across the aisle, I instructed the bus driver to pull into an empty parking lot just a few miles from Giants Stadium. The lot was in a desolate part of town—a few deserted buildings were nearby, a liquor store was on the corner, trash blew across the blacktop. It was an unusual place to stop.

The bus driver opened the doors in what looked like the middle of nowhere; I stood up and shouted over the heads of players and coaches, “Everybody out! Right now, let’s go. Move it! Move it!”

The team was confused but complied—gathering alongside the bus and studying me as I paced back and forth, fuming, with a rolled-up copy of the
New York Post
in my hands.

I opened the
Post
and looked down at it with an anguished and disgusted expression on my face. Slowly I started shaking my head back and forth and then looked up at the team and launched into an angry tirade.

“Have any of you read this?” I asked with disgust. Of course none of the players knew what “this” was so they remained silent or shook their heads. It was like they had been called into the principal’s office for unknown but ominous reasons.

“Goddamn it! I’m sick and tired of what the New York media elite is saying about us!” I yelled, waving the
Post
in their faces. “The papers, television, fans—everybody out there is trying to make us look like some Brie-eating, wine-sipping pushovers; we’re back to being called a laughingstock!”

I threw down the paper and stormed away.

The team was stunned. They simply didn’t know how to respond. Immediately, I returned and continued the diatribe: “They’re ridiculing us and who we are, all that we’ve accomplished, making jokes about us and the big ‘genius’ who coaches you, and I’m
sick
of it. I can’t take this. I just can’t stand this shit any more!”

I walked slowly along the loosely assembled front row of 49ers—studying them like General George Patton inspecting his troops. My anguish burrowed in: “I had to tell you this, fellas; I had to tell you because you’ve got to put a stop to it; you’ve got to help me get control of this thing. A team like ours has so much tradition; it’s absolutely unforgivable that this organization is being mocked! Will you help me? Can you shut ’em up? Can you stop this kind of crap from continuing any longer? Can you stuff it down their goddamn throats?”

Before I could finish that last sentence, the team roared back their support, shouting some expletives Patton might have smiled at. There was blood in the air. As the players poured back into the bus with a vengeance, I glanced at Bobb McKittrick, one of my assistant coaches, and he gave me a little wink. Bobb knew exactly what I was up to.