Winners Act Like Winners (Before They’re Winners)

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.

“Fella, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the SOB who hired you.”

This included providing him with a budget manual (thick), an operations manual (thick), a personnel manual (thick), an overall set of job descriptions that included the specific job of each player and my evaluation of that individual (thick), and a detailed listing of my performance goals and expectations (even thicker). On and on and on. Paper. Pa

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.

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 its

Leadership is expertise. It is not rhetoric or cheerleading speeches. People will follow a person who organizes and manages others, because he or she has credibility and expertise—a knowledge of the profession—and demonstrates an understanding of human nature.

Concentrate on what will produce results rather than on the results, the process rather

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.