Sublime

When you bring a “Ronnie Lott” into your organization, you are actually bringing several “Ronnie Lotts” aboard, because they create others in their own image.

Looking back, it was something I should not have allowed. I let him haul me over the coals in regard to my effort or performance when he had no basis for doing it. His only basis was that he owned the team, a pretty good basis, but not enough for me to let him excoriate me without significant cause in front of the team even once.

Bill Walsh had the ability to change the way people thought—not just how we performed a task, but how we thought and felt about who we were. In the beginning, when we were as bad as we were, nobody was thinking about a Super Bowl. Our goal in life was just to be pretty good. Bill’s goal in life was to convince us that we could be great. And he did;

Be fair. The 49ers treated people right. I believe your value system is as important to success as your expertise.

Acknowledge the uniqueness of each employee

How good are you at looking through the evidence from the past—especially the recent past? There’s a certain knack to it, but basically it requires a keen eye for analysis, a commonsense mind for parsing evidence that

All he talked about was improvement. And he knew how to teach improvement.

During my years as head coach both at Stanford University and with the San Francisco 49ers, I believe it is safe to say there was no single individual in the organization—player, assistant coach, trainer, staff member, groundskeeper, or anyone else—who could accurately say he or she out-worked me.

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