The Score Takes Care of Itself (3 page)

Bill Walsh loved lists, viewed them as a road map to results. That may sound simplistic, but I believe it was an important part of his astounding deductive-reasoning ability. When confronted with a “problem”—for example, how do we score touchdowns without a good running game or a strong passer? what is our communication process on the sidelines during a game when crowd noise becomes overwhelming? what are the specific duties of my executive vice president for football operations? and hundreds and hundreds more—Bill Walsh dissected the issue into its relevant parts, found a solution, and then taught the solution to the appropriate individuals. His creative and commonsense brilliance as a problem solver was unsurpassed and a major component in the installation of what he called the Standard of Performance.

I kidded him once that he was so obsessive about lists that he probably had lists of the lists in his file cabinet. He didn’t deny it. I found a list of directives for his speech to receptionists at 49er headquarters that was two pages long with bullet point after bullet point. Here’s bullet point number seventeen: “Your job is not civil service or even big corporate business. We exist to support and field a football team. In other words, we don’t ‘exist for the sake of existing.’ We are not
maintaining
.” He told me this addressed his concern that most people simply go through the motions at their jobs, just putting in time—existing—with a “business as usual” attitude. Not if you’re on
his
team.

The meticulous manner in which he detailed specific actions and attitudes of his Standard of Performance as applied to secretaries and receptionists was true throughout the organization but in increasingly exponential quantities.

Bill Walsh was cautious in part because he was savvy. One day I started asking him about the leadership characteristics of other outstanding coaches—first Tom Landry, then Mike Holmgren, next Jimmy Johnson. Initially, he was open and insightful (as you’ll read later). But then, suddenly, he decided this was a subject he did not like, namely, talking about his peers—that I was taking him down a path that could cause problems for him. And
that
was the end of that discussion. The atmosphere in his small office chilled: “I’ve got to make some calls,” he said brusquely as he broke off his description of Bill Parcells and picked up the phone. And without his saying so, I knew he had dismissed me for the day. (I noticed as I was leaving that he put the phone down, never made a call.)

Bill had sensed, incorrectly, that I was looking for some dirt or critical comments on other coaches. He was a very careful man.

Bill Walsh was an educator—a teacher. He accumulated great knowledge because he was a Grade A student of leadership, paying close attention along the way to some of football’s most outstanding and forward-thinking coaches, most of all Paul Brown (of the Cincinnati Bengals). Bill absorbed their good ideas, learned from their bad ones, applied his own even more advanced concepts, and then
reveled
in the process of teaching what he knew to his teams. I came to believe that the part of football he enjoyed best was teaching, or more accurately, identifying outstanding talent and teaching that player, assistant coach, or staff member how to be great. He loved it.

Bill Walsh was without pretense, almost soft-spoken. While his comportment was never chummy—there was a reserve to his manner—he was easy to talk to and be with unless I hit a nerve. For all the attention and glory that had been heaped on him during and especially after the dynasty years, he was normal—coffee-and-doughnuts normal; although not laid-back or casual, he was unaffected. You’d think you were talking to a very successful and focused midlevel corporate executive unless you noticed the picture on the wall of Bill standing next to Joe Montana holding a Super Bowl trophy, or the picture on the other wall of Bill standing next to Joe Montana holding a different Super Bowl trophy.

All of the above became apparent to me as we proceeded to write this book revealing Bill’s leadership philosophy. Along the way, I secured a generous offer from a publisher eager to share the “wisdom of Walsh”—when it came to building a top team in business or elsewhere. And then, boom! Just as simply and suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. No book.

Bill—retired from the NFL for ten years—had accepted an offer to return in an executive capacity to the San Francisco 49ers. On the same day that I received a lengthy contract from a publisher, he called with the news that he was going back to the NFL. I knew what that meant, because in our earliest conversations he had laid out only one stipulation: “If I go back to the NFL, I don’t want this book coming out. I don’t need the headache.” It was a handshake deal. And so, no book.

As writers do, I put my writing and notes and tapes and collected articles and interviews and research material into boxes, put the boxes into storage, and then forgot about it—or tried to. It was great stuff on leadership that Bill had shared in our conversations, and it seemed a shame to pack it up and move on. But that’s what happened.

Bill lent a hand to resuscitating the moribund 49ers for several years (his towering San Francisco 49er dynasty had fallen into disrepair and he was called back to duty) and I continued work with UCLA’s legendary basketball coach, John Wooden. A book we had written earlier was becoming a best seller, and it led us to a productive professional association and friendship, including more books, television presentations, seminars, and even a best-selling publication for children.

My boxes marked “Bill Walsh Leadership” were collecting dust. And then one day my phone rang. “Hello, this is Bill Walsh,” the voice said. “I’m very interested in getting that book finished up, Steve.” As with our first phone call, I was almost at a loss for words. He was no longer working for the 49ers and, in fact, was lecturing on a regular basis to corporate groups and students at Stanford University about leadership. It was time, he said, to get his book on leadership published. Ten years had gone by.

I was delighted: “If you’ve got some time next week, I’ll meet you at Stanford and you can review the manuscript again before I go back to publishers.” That sounded good to him: “Fine! Oops, wait a minute. I’m going into the hospital for some tests next week. But if you want, it’s probably okay to meet me there.”

I don’t like hospitals and didn’t particularly want to impose on Bill while he was wearing a gown: “No, no. Let’s wait a week. Is it anything to be worried about, the tests?” I asked. He assured me that it was routine, nothing serious, just a series of tests to check on something that had been going on for a while. I said, “Okay, I’ll talk to you after you finish up at the hospital. Good luck.” He replied, “I’ll see you then.”

Not long after that, Bill was dead—leukemia. The greatest coach in football’s history was seventy-five.

I had come to feel close to him over the years, first as a fan watching Bill lead the 49ers to multiple Super Bowl championships; later working with him on this book; and still later watching him from afar as he wrestled once again with the problems of a struggling team. Through it all he had exhibited poise, intelligence, and a basic decency.

Bill and I certainly were not buddies, but from the start he treated me right. (I learned recently that Bill had plenty of friends, associates, and a ton of great working relationships but almost no buddies, intimates with whom he could bare his soul.) He was unpretentious, forthright, no BS; his composure and presence were so unique and appealing. As Joe Montana told me, “You knew immediately there was something special about him.”

And I had grown to appreciate—be astonished by—his incredible story of overcoming impossible odds in the NFL with the singularity of his leadership brilliance, management acumen, and football creativity and the force of his will.

There also was his willingness to talk about the personal issues, his emotional meltdown in the second season, the toll of not just getting to the top, but staying there, triumph and burnout, and, of course, all the insights into leadership—“but here’s the lesson I learned.”

I had, in my own small way, gotten to know and greatly respect Bill, and his death hurt; it knocked the wind out of my sails for the book; I’m not sure why. He was a good guy, a real guy. So, sadly, once again I put our manuscript back in boxes. This time for good. Or so I thought.

Several months after the public tributes and a big memorial service at Candlestick Park (where Bill had worked his leadership genius) had been concluded, a friend of mine, Peter Fatooh, a successful local executive and big-time fan of the 49ers, started telling me how much he respected Bill Walsh as a leader, how far ahead of everybody he had been in his thinking. I mentioned casually that I had been working on a book with Bill at the time of his death but wasn’t going to publish it now—that I had kind of lost heart, gotten the wind knocked out of me by his death. “Would you mind if I read it?” Peter asked. “I’d like to know what Bill says about leadership.”

I offered to let him read the manuscript if he promised not to pass it around. “It’s just for you to read,” I told him. He agreed. One week later I saw him again at the San Francisco Tennis Club (where Bill used to play a frustrating game of tennis occasionally), and Peter was eager to tell me the following: “Steve, you’ve got to get Bill’s book published. It’s great. Just great.” He returned the manuscript and said, “Now I know why he was so exceptional. I’ve already started using some of his ideas myself.” Somehow, Peter’s honest and positive opinion got me back up and running.

A few weeks later, I contacted Bill’s only surviving son, Craig, who agreed to meet me and listen to the history of his father’s book on leadership. We met for lunch at the Fish Market Restaurant in Foster City, California, not too far from 711 Nevada Street, where Bill had begun his work building the 49er dynasty more than twenty-five years earlier. I gave Craig the manuscript for this book and told him that if he didn’t like it I would withhold it from publication. With his father’s death, he was the one who should now decide whether or not the book merited publication.

A few days later, Craig called: “I think you’ve really got something special here, Steve. I see why Dad wanted this available to the public.” And then he added that he had access to additional lecture notes by his father, as well as tapes and other material that might be useful. He could also supply original notes and information from a book for football coaches that Bill had written but withdrawn from publication. Also, and most important, he could offer his own insider’s perspective on his father’s incredible journey.

And so Bill’s book was back on track once again, this time without Bill, but with the blessing and participation of his son. I contacted Jeffrey Krames, one of the publishing world’s foremost editors in the field of management and leadership (also the author of books on the leadership lessons of Jack Welch, Peter Drucker, Lou Gerstner, and others), who saw the deep value of the Bill Walsh philosophy of leadership when it came to management and team building. He, in turn, brought the great creative resources of Portfolio Publishing into play and gave us the green light. And that, in a big nutshell, is how Bill’s book on leadership got published. Looking back, it seems almost impossible.

It has been an extraordinary experience for me. So many unusual happenings: Bill picking up the phone
himself
that day many years ago because his secretary was away on a family emergency (if he hadn’t, I doubt we would have gotten together for this book); his return to the NFL, which stopped the book in its tracks; Bill’s call to me years later saying he wanted to get this book published (nudged, it turns out, by my friend UCLA coach John Wooden); soon after, Bill’s final, fatal diagnosis of leukemia; his death; the mourning; the encouragement from Peter Fatooh; the blessing and full participation of Craig Walsh and the great perception of Jeffrey Krames and his boss at Portfolio, Adrian Zackheim. All I can figure is that Bill’s book was meant to be.

Through it all there has been one fundamental and powerful constant: the substantive leadership wisdom of football’s legendary coach, Bill Walsh. His brilliance was evident in the first minute of our conversation in that little office on Sand Hill Road, and it continued every time he spoke.

Bill Walsh loved to teach. This is his final lecture on leadership.

I would never write anything that suggests the path to success is a continuum of positive, even euphoric experiences—that if you do all the right things everything will work out. Frequently it doesn’t; often you crash and burn. This is part and parcel of pursuing and achieving very ambitious goals. It is also one of the profound lessons I have learned during my career, namely, that even when you have an organization brimming with talent, victory is not always under your control. Rather, it’s like quicksilver—fleeting and elusive, not something you can summon at will even under the best circumstances. Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called “failure.”

That reality was present throughout my career, from coaching the Huskies of Washington Union High School in Fremont, California, to the San Francisco 49ers, and all the stops along the way—San Jose State, Stanford University and the University of California-Berkeley, the Oakland Raiders, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the San Diego Chargers. Always the same principle was present: There is no guarantee, no ultimate formula for success.

However, a resolute and resourceful leader understands that there are a multitude of means to increase the
probability
of success. And that’s what it all comes down to, namely, intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase your chance of prevailing in a competitive environment. When you do that, the score will take care of itself.

Professional football, in my opinion, is the moral equivalent of war. The stress, wear and tear, and assault on a person’s spirit and basic self-esteem are incredible. It takes an individual to the outer limits of his capabilities and may provide one of the ultimate studies of people because it is such a cruel, volatile, and emotionally and physically dangerous activity.