Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organizaion

“Activity—to produce real results—must be organized and executed meticulously. Otherwise, it’s no different from children running around the playground at recess.”

From the first moment of the first day of UCLA’s season, I insisted we do things right—not almost right, but completely right. It’s an attitude, a way of conducting business. A casual approach to executing the details of a job ensures that the job will be done poorly. And then another job will be done poorly. It grows.

the day-by-day particulars of how you conduct business.

wastebasket. Carelessness, like sloppiness, is not a characteristic seen in successful organizations; tolerating either is the mark of an ineffective leader.

masterpiece, each practice a pursuit of perfection. There was a sense of urgency in everything we did; not haste, not hurry, but hustle.

An individual grounded in the fundamentals has, I believe, a much higher likelihood of success when sudden change is forced upon him.

All this eventually starts to add up and make a difference: socks and shoestrings, ice and oranges, neatness and uniformity. These are little things that are neither unimportant nor incidental. And when I identified a detail that seemed relevant, I took care of it, because our team would benefit. To me, this is less about being a perfectionist and

New practice uniforms, good shoes, jerseys tucked in—these things make a difference.

It was a detail that helped teach our players that sloppiness was not tolerated—in anything.