The Score Takes Care of Itself (7 page)

I nurtured a variation of that extreme attitude in our entire organization, most especially the players: “You can’t let your buddies down. Demand and expect sacrifice from yourself, and they’ll do the same for you.” That is the measure, in my opinion, of any great organization, including a team of football players—that willingness to sacrifice for the team, to go the extra mile, the extra five or fifty miles. And it starts with the leader and your leadership staff.

It has a transformative effect. Bonding within the organization takes place as one individual and then another steps up and raises his or her level of commitment, sacrifice, and performance. They demand and expect a lot of one another. That’s extremely important because 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.

It’s why egotism can hurt group pride and unity so much. An individual who acts like a big shot, as if he or she is solely responsible for what the team has accomplished, has taken over ownership of the group’s achievement. 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 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. Ultimately, it’s the strongest bond of all, even stronger than money.

The commitment to, and execution of, the specific actions and attitudes embodied in my Standard of Performance—some picky, some profound—may seem far removed from Super Bowl victories, but they were crucial to creating and cementing a 49er level of professionalism that I viewed as the foundation on which future success could be constructed. (That’s what the assistant coach who complained about my lack of focus on winning didn’t understand.)

Consequently, the 49er organization increasingly became known for our businesslike and very professional behavior even when we were losing more games than we were winning. There was no showboating allowed after touchdowns, no taunting of opponents, no demonstrations to attract attention to oneself, because one individual shouldn’t take credit for what our whole team had done. There was a minimum of whining, complaining, and backstabbing. And phones were answered in a professional manner: “San Francisco 49ers headquarters. How may I assist you?” All calls had to be returned within twenty-four hours.

Eventually—within months, in fact—a high level of professionalism began to emerge within our entire organization. The 49ers’
self
-perception was improving; individuals began acting and thinking in a way that reflected pride and professionalism, even as we continued to lose games. 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.

I moved forward methodically with a deep belief that the many elements of 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. 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.

It all sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? But it’s a rough road. At the end of my first year, giving it everything I had, working more hours than seemed possible and after installing many of the elements of my Standard of Performance, this is what we had to show for it: the same miserable won-lost record as the year before I took over: 2-14. A cynic might have said, “Well, Bill, your switchboard operators answer the phones great, but your team stinks.”

Nevertheless, my teaching in all areas was being implemented as the base for the future of the San Francisco 49ers. While the performance results were not good if measured strictly by the won-lost record, the organizational structure and environment were set in place to produce success. We lost most of our games, but we did not “stink.”

In a way, 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. My Standard of Performance was establishing a better and better “assembly line.” We were becoming a first-class organization in all areas.

Proof of that existed although it was not evident in our 2-14 record. I needed to look for evidence elsewhere. Very talented individuals had been hired; malcontents, underachievers, and the unmotivated were being rooted out and replaced; learning was well under way, with very productive attitudes and behaviors becoming the norm; and statistical evidence—the internal metrics—showed improvement, including going from virtually the worst-ranked offensive team to one of the best: number one in passing offense and sixth in total offense. Additionally, we had lost five games during my first season by a touchdown or less—close, competitive games. We lost an additional seven games by two touchdowns or less. Both were improvements over the previous season. Before you can win the fight, you’ve got to be
in
the fight.

Even though my initial year as head coach produced the identical won-lost record, the resurrection of the San Francisco 49ers was under way; the organization’s behavioral “infrastructure” was essentially built.

Achieving success takes patience, time, and fortitude. To demand the assimilation of my Standard of Performance throughout the organization, including the complex offensive plays and the specifics of player performance, when the roof is caving in—we lost thirteen of our first fourteen games—would have been challenging, even impossible, for many.

In the beginning, Eddie DeBartolo, the owner, had the patience and gave me the time to persevere. Tough days lay ahead, including that trip to Miami during my second season that was almost fatal, but our ship had found its mooring. We were no longer adrift and being tossed around with abandon by the competition and ourselves.

And in the turbulent and occasionally troubled times ahead it was indeed my Standard of Performance that kept us in contention or at the top for almost twenty years and produced five Super Bowl championships. This consistency of excellence and preeminence is difficult to achieve in professional sports—and equally hard in business.

Within our organization 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. That’s the toughest thing—constancy amid chaos or presumed perfection.

If things are going well, points being scored and games won, your organization may be elated and lose focus; if things are going poorly, as they were when I arrived at San Francisco, people are likely to be despondent and start looking for the exit. Incredibly, both can exist at the same time, as you’ll see later in a game we played against Kansas City. And, of course, between the ups and downs, the good times and bad, there are ongoing challenges to keep everyone firing on all cylinders at all times. Not to get too clever, but “consistent effort is a consistent challenge.”

There’s an ebb and flow, an up and down, in every significant endeavor at every level. I cut through that ebb and flow with the Standard of Performance. It was our point of reference, what we always returned to when things wobbled—deeply entrenched, ongoing, and stabilizing regardless of the final score. My high standards for actions and attitudes within our organization never wavered—regardless of whether we were winning or losing.

I envisioned it as enabling us to establish a near-permanent “base camp” near the summit, consistently close to the top, within striking distance, never falling to the bottom of the mountain and having to start all over again. Initially, it meant 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. Players past their peak or near the end of their usefulness had to be taken out of the organization. And, yes, this is as cruel and hard to do as it sounds. It is perhaps the hardest task I faced, and I tried to execute it in a humane, direct, and honest manner. But it’s impossible not to hurt an individual’s deep self-respect when it’s being done—when I had to look a great performer in the eye and say, “It’s time for you to leave.” There is perhaps no way you can do it without causing deep pain. But, the organization, our team, came first.

Losing and winning was only part of it; there was always another contest. If I didn’t like the score, I would seek to step up the level of our Standard of Performance so that even in losing it was retained, but then elevated. It always went back to the requirements for actions and attitudes that I had formulated in my mind during the years before I took over as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and then installed starting on my first day.

In many ways, it comes down to details. The intense focus on those pertinent details cements the foundation that establishes excellence in performance. The simplest correct execution of procedures represents the commitment of players and staff to the organization and the organization to them. Specifics such as “shirttails in,” understanding and respecting the jobs of others in the organization, running exactly ten yards and not ten yards fifteen inches, exhibiting a positive attitude, answering the phones professionally, seeing the team as an extension of yourself—all contribute in varying degrees to a devotion to high standards visible to everyone. The self-image of the 49ers as a first-class professional outfit was nurtured and carefully developed in these incremental ways. That’s what I focused on, knowing that if I did so, winning would take care of itself.

In quantifying and implementing your own version of the Standard of Performance, the following guidelines are a good reference point:

I have a terrible time closing out a set in tennis. Why? Because I tell myself to try harder and harder, to hit the ball better and better. I become a victim of myself and go into a kind of stupor because I’m trying so hard without really knowing what the heck I’m trying to do.

The same thing can happen to you professionally. Individuals or organizations can get almost mesmerized by pressure and stress and be unable to function as cleanly as they are capable of doing. It happens everywhere all the time. Have you noticed, however, that great players and great companies don’t suddenly start hunching up, grimacing, and trying to “hit the ball harder” at a critical point? Rather, they’re in a mode, a zone in which they’re performing and depending on their “game,” which they’ve mastered over many months and years of intelligently directed hard work.

There’s only so much thinking you can isolate and focus on during that kind of extreme competitive pressure. It has to be tactical more than a conscious effort to really “try harder.” You just want to function very well, up to your potential, effortlessly—do what you
already
know how to do at the level of excellence you’ve acquired—whether in making a presentation or coaching a game or anything else. That’s why I’m no good in tennis at crunch time.

In football, I was a master at crunch time because I had put in years of smart hard work in mastering my craft and creating a comprehensive Standard of Performance for my organization. In tennis, I haven’t done that, but it doesn’t matter much because I’m playing just for fun. The business of football, however, was not something I did just for fun. It was deadly serious.