Sublime

He would ask me to get up and “teach” my offensive techniques to a defensive coach, who would play the part of a student—a player. Bill would critique us, teach us how to communicate better and better so that the players would be more fully informed. No other coach in the NFL was coaching his coaches like this. And it was serious business with him.

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.

“I came to the San Francisco 49ers with a specific goal—to implement what I call the Standard of Performance. It was a way of doing things, a leadership philosophy, that has as much to do with core values, principles, and ideals as with blocking, tackling, and passing; more to do with the mental than with the physical.”

Those same numbers, in my opinion, applied not only to the San Francisco 49ers but to our competition, as well. I recognized that my job as a leader was to get more out of my 80 percent than the opposing coach and his staff could get out of their 80 percent. I believe a parallel phenomenon holds true in business. After all, in business, every day i

During this early period I began hiring personnel with four characteristics I value most highly: talent, character, functional intelligence (beyond basic intelligence, the ability to think on your feet, quickly and spontaneously), and an eagerness to adopt my way of doing things, my philosophy. These included assistant coaches I was very familiar w

“I came to the San Francisco 49ers with a specific goal—to implement what I call the Standard of Performance. It was a way of doing things, a leadership philosophy, that has as much to do with core values, principles, and ideals as with blocking, tackling, and passing; more to do with the mental than with the physical.”

From the start, my prime directive, the fundamental goal, was the full and total implementation throughout the organization of the actions and attitudes of the Standard of Performance I described earlier. This was radical in the sense that winning is the usual prime directive in professional football and most businesses.

What Bill Walsh did is easy to describe: (1) He could identify problems that needed to be solved; and (2) He could solve them. Pretty straightforward, right? But the magnitude and range of his problem-solving ability was pretty spectacular, especially when coupled with an amazing capacity to understand all aspects of a football organization—what