The Score Takes Care of Itself

16 min readSep 25, 2019

I’ll be going through this bit by bit…

Bill Walsh

This book was filled with anecdotes and moments. It’s best content manifests itself in the following lists. It covers how one deals with defeat, how to implement your vision, personal characteristics to possess, tips on what not to do and how to manage your personal relations.

This in particular stood out to me.

When that happens, you become useless, a hindrance to progress. When your feedback is interpreted as a personal attack rather than a critique with positive intentions, you are going backward

One needs to be careful

When you face defeat

MY FIVE DOS FOR GETTING BACK INTO THE GAME:

Do expect defeat. It’s a given when the stakes are high and the competition is working ferociously to beat you. If you’re surprised when it happens, you’re dreaming; dreamers don’t last long.
Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional “train wreck” you have just been in. It’s mental quicksand.
Do allow yourself appropriate recovery — grieving — time. You’ve been knocked senseless; give yourself a little time to recuperate. A keyword here is “little.” Don’t let it drag on.
Do tell yourself, “I am going to stand and fight again,” with the knowledge that often when things are at their worst you’re closer than you can imagine to success. Our Super Bowl victory arrived less than sixteen months after my “train wreck” in Miami.
Do begin planning for your next serious encounter. The smallest steps — plans — move you forward on the road to recovery. Focus on the fix.

MY FIVE DON’TS:

Don’t ask, “Why me?”
Don’t expect sympathy.
Don’t bellyache.
Don’t keep accepting condolences.
Don’t blame others.

Great teams in business, in sports, or elsewhere have a conscience. At its best, an organization — your team — bespeaks values and a way of doing things that emanate from a source; that source is you — the leader. Thus, the dictates of your personal beliefs should ultimately become characteristics of your team. You must know what needs to be done and possess the capabilities and conviction to get it done. Several factors affect this, but none is more important than the dictates of your own personal beliefs. Collectively, they comprise your philosophy. A philosophy is the aggregate of your attitudes toward fundamental matters and is derived from a process of consciously thinking about critical issues and developing rational reasons for holding one particular belief or position rather than another. Many things shape your philosophy, including your background, experiences, work environment, education, aspirations, and more. By adhering to your philosophical tenets you are provided with a systematic, yet practical, method of deciding what to do in a particular situation. It is a conceptual blueprint for action; that is, a perception of what should be done, when it should be done, and why it should be done. Your philosophy is the single most important navigational point on your leadership compass.

My Standard of Performance — the values and beliefs within it — guided everything I did in my work at San Francisco and are defined as follows:
Exhibit a ferocious and intelligently applied work ethic directed at continual improvement;
demonstrate respect for each person in the organization and the work he or she does; be deeply committed to learning and teaching, which means increasing my own expertise;
be fair;
demonstrate character;
honor the direct connection between details and improvement, and relentlessly seek the latter;
show self-control, especially where it counts most — under pressure; demonstrate and prize loyalty;
use positive language and have a positive attitude; take pride in my effort as an entity separate from the result of that effort;
be willing to go the extra distance for the organization;
deal appropriately with victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation (don’t get crazy with victory nor dysfunctional with loss);
promote internal communication that is both open and substantive (especially under stress); seek poise in myself and those I lead;
put the team’s welfare and priorities ahead of my own; maintain an ongoing level of concentration and focus that is abnormally high;
and make sacrifice and commitment the organization’s trademark.

In that regard I sought individuals who had the ability to work with others. A fundamental element in this is not only the ability of a person to understand his own role and how it fits into the organization’s goal, but a knowledge or understanding of other people’s roles. Part of my job was to facilitate this mutual understanding and appreciation.

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.

Implementing your vision

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

Start with a comprehensive recognition of, reverence for, and identification of the specific actions and attitudes relevant to your team’s performance and production.
Be clarion clear in communicating your expectation of high effort and execution of your Standard of Performance. Like water, many decent individuals will seek lower ground if left to their own inclinations. In most cases you are the one who inspires and demands they go upward rather than settle for the comfort of doing what comes easily. Push them beyond their comfort zone; expect them to give extra effort.
Let all know that you expect them to possess the highest level of expertise in their area of responsibility.
Beyond standards and methodology, teach your beliefs, values, and philosophy. An organization is not an inanimate object. It is a living organism that you must nurture, guide, and strengthen.
Teach “connection and extension.” An organization filled with individuals who are “independent contractors” unattached to one another is a team with little interior cohesion and strength.
Make the expectations and metrics of competence that you demand in action and attitudes from personnel the new reality of your organization. You must provide the model for that new standard in your own actions and attitude.

Your optics

Success doesn’t care which road you take to get to its doorstep. The traditionalists — rigid and resistant in their thinking — who sneered at the new passing system I was creating were soon trying to figure out why it was beating them and how to copy it.
Be bold. Remove fear of the unknown — that is, change — from your mind. Respect the past without clinging to it: “That’s the way we’ve always done it” is the mantra of a team setting itself up to lose to an organization that’s not doing it that way any more. Paul Brown didn’t flinch when I came to him with my revolutionary ideas — a completely new system of playing offensive football. By nature he was an innovator who wasn’t afraid of change.
Desperation should not drive innovation. Here’s a good question to write on a Post-it Note and put on your desk: “What assets do we have right now that we’re not taking advantage of?” Virgil Carter’s “limited” skills, the 53.5 yards of width, and the availability of five potential receivers were all available assets even before desperation drove me to utilize them creatively. While waiting to get what you want — a “quarterback with a strong arm” — make the most of what you’ve got.
Be obsessive in looking for the upside in the downside. My evaluation of Virgil Carter’s “weak” résumé, his so-called limited assets, led directly to utilizing them productively. Why? Instead of looking for reasons we couldn’t make it work, I sought solutions that would make it succeed.

Personal Attitudes

Be yourself. I am not Vince Lombardi; Vince Lombardi was not Bill Walsh. My style was my style, and it worked for me. Your style will work for you when you take advantage of your strengths and strive to overcome your weaknesses. You must be the best version of yourself that you can be; stay within the framework of your own personality and be authentic. If you’re faking it, you’ll be found out.
Be committed to excellence. I developed my Standard of Performance over three decades in the business of football. It could just as accurately (although more awkwardly) been called “Bill’s Prerequisites for Doing Your Job at the Highest Level of Excellence Vis-à-Vis Your Actions and Attitude on Our Team.” My commitment to this “product” — excellence — preceded my commitment to winning football games. At all times, in all ways, your focus must be on doing things at the highest possible level.
Be positive. I spent far more time teaching what to do than what not to do; far more time teaching and encouraging individuals than criticizing them; more time building up than tearing down. There is a constructive place for censure and highlighting negative aspects of a situation, but too often it is done simply to vent and creates a barrier between you and others. Maintain an affirmative, constructive, positive environment.
Be prepared. (Good luck is a product of good planning.) Work hard to get ready for expected situations — events you know will happen. Equally important, plan and prepare for the unexpected. “What happens when what’s supposed to happen doesn’t happen?” is the question that you must always be asking and solving. No leader can control the outcome of the contest or competition, but you can control how you prepare for it.
Be detail-oriented. Organizational excellence evolves from the perfection of details relevant to performance and production. What are they for you? High performance is achieved small step by small step through painstaking dedication to pertinent details. (Caution: Do not make the mistake of burying yourself alive in those details.) Address all aspects of your team’s efforts to prepare mentally, physically, fundamentally, and strategically in as thorough a manner as is humanly possible.
Be organized. A symphony will sound like a mess without a musical score that organizes each and every note so that the musicians know precisely what to play and when to play it. Great organization is the trademark of a great organization. You must think clearly with a disciplined mind, especially in regard to the most efficient and productive use of time and resources.
Be accountable. Excuse making is contagious. Answerability starts with you. If you make excuses — which is first cousin to “alibiing” — so will those around you. Your organization will soon be filled with finger-pointing individuals whose battle cry is, “It’s his fault, not mine!”
Be near-sighted and far-sighted. Keep everything in perspective while simultaneously concentrating fully on the task at hand. All decisions should be made with an eye toward how they
affect the organization’s performance — not how they affect you or your feelings. All efforts and plans should be considered not only in terms of short-run effect, but also in terms of how they impact the organization long term. This is very difficult.
Be fair. The 49ers treated people right. I believe your value system is as important to success as your expertise. Ethically sound values engender respect from those you lead and give your team strength and resilience. Be clear in your own mind as to what you stand for. And then stand up for it.
Be firm. I would not budge one inch on my core values, standards, and principles.
Be flexible. I was agile in adapting to changing circumstances. Consistency is crucial, but you must be quick to adjust to new challenges that defy the old solutions.
Believe in yourself. To a large degree, a leader must “sell” himself to the team. This is impossible unless you exhibit self-confidence. While I was rarely accused of cockiness, it was apparent to most observers that I had significant belief — self-confidence — in what I was doing. Of course, belief derives from expertise.
Be a leader. Whether you are a head coach, CEO, or sales manager, you must know where you’re going and how you intend to get there, keeping in mind that it may be necessary to modify your tactics as circumstances dictate. You must be able to inspire and motivate through teaching people how to execute their jobs at the highest level. You must care about people and help those people care about one another and the team’s goals. And you must never second-guess yourself on decisions you make with integrity, intelligence, and a team-first attitude.

DO NOT DO THESE

Here are ten additional nails you can pound into your professional coffin:

Exhibit patience, paralyzing patience.
Engage in delegating — massive delegating — or conversely, engage in too little delegating.
Act in a tedious, overly cautious manner.
Become best buddies with certain employees.
Spend excessive amounts of time socializing with superiors or subordinates.
Fail to continue hard-nosed performance evaluations of longtime — “tenured” — staff members, the ones most likely to go on cruise control, to relax.
Fail to actively participate in efforts to appraise and acquire new hires.
Trust others to carry out your fundamental duties.
Find ways to get out from under the responsibilities of your position, to move accountability from yourself to others — the blame game.
Promote an organizational environment that is comfortable and laid-back in the misbelief that the workplace should be fun, lighthearted, and free from appropriate levels of tension and urgency

Tips from General Patton

Remember that praise is more valuable than blame. Remember, too, that your primary mission as a leader is to see with your own eyes and be seen by your own troops while engaged in personal reconnaissance.
Use every means before and after combat to tell troops what they are going to do and what they have done.
Discipline is based on pride in the profession of arms, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death.
Officers must assert themselves by example and by voice. They must be preeminent in courage, deportment and dress.
General officers must be seen in the front line during action.
There is a tendency for the chain of command to overload junior officers by excessive requirements in the way of training and reports. You will alleviate this burden by eliminating non-essential demands

When I criticized or gave feedback to someone, it wasn’t defeatist. It was always focused on the here and now and never conjured up images or incidents of poor play over the previous days or weeks (for example, “Your motion was lousy. That’s why you’ve been throwing interceptions for the last three weeks. How long is it going to take to get it right? I’m getting tired of seeing this over and over.”). It creates a sense of piling on, of browbeating. When that happens, you lose credibility and respect because the subject of your continuous criticism sees it as a personal attack. Others see it and react the same way. (This is not to say I never piled on or wasn’t occasionally guilty of browbeating.) If you’re growing a garden, you need to pull out the weeds, but flowers will die if all you do is pick weeds. They need sunshine and water. People are the same. They need criticism, but they also require positive and substantive language and information and true support to really blossom. If you’re perceived as a negative person — always picking, pulling, criticizing — you will simply get tuned out by those around you. Your influence, ability to teach, and opportunity to make progress will be diminished and eventually lost. When that happens, you become useless, a hindrance to progress. When your feedback is interpreted as a personal attack rather than a critique with positive intentions, you are going backward. Constructive criticism is a powerful instrument essential for improving performance. Positive support can be equally productive. Used together by a skilled leader they become the key to maximum results. Most of us seem to be more inclined to offer the negative. I don’t know why, but it’s easier to criticize than to compliment. Find the right mixture for optimum results.

Many mistakenly believe that just presenting facts — information — is teaching. Successful teaching is a twoway process. Just as a pass is not successful until the receiver catches it, successful teaching requires reception, retention, and comprehension of your message. Some teach by word, others by deed — their example is the teacher. The best teaching uses both forms of communication, word and deed. And in all situations, enthusiasm for the subject matter is what powers the communication connection to those you teach.

My checklist for keeping good staff members on the same page: 1. You must establish clear parameters for your staff regarding the overall method by which you expect things to be done. They must be reminded — instructed, when necessary — of your Standard of Performance: philosophy, style and substance, strategies and tactics. 2. Any philosophical differences that crop up must be identified and addressed by you in private meetings with the individual(s). Sweeping them under the rug is misdirected management. 3. You must recognize that staff members may work in different ways, using approaches that are at variance with yours. This can be relatively inconsequential as long as you and the staff member are philosophically compatible on the key issues (e.g., attention to detail, exhibiting respect to all members of the organization). Insisting on a totalitarian, lockstep mentality removes creativity from within. 4 . To ensure unanimity throughout the staff, make unannounced visits to various department meetings. You can lose elements of your team to a maverick staff member if you’re invisible long enough. 5. Don’t cede inordinate power or control to a staff member simply because you are relieved to have an experienced and proven performer come on board. Assigning complete control without any monitoring of methods or means can allow a separate kingdom to develop, which will split your organization into factions. 6. Sometimes a staff member may intentionally teach a philosophy that is at odds with your code of conduct, in the belief that it conforms to your philosophy. He or she may also, on occasion, unconsciously revert to his or her own techniques or philosophy. This does not constitute insubordination until you have firmly pointed out the issue and the staff member continues to put forth ideas that are counter to what you want done. Then you must take corrective action that goes beyond a “reminder.” 7. Be alert for those staff members who seek to use their position to teach and express
their personal beliefs. Politics and religion are the two most common areas. 8. Remember Mike Ditka’s comment on leadership after his Bears won a Super Bowl championship: “Personal contact is part of hands-on management. Go to the other guy’s office; tell him what you have in mind so there is no misunderstanding.

Formally celebrate and observe the momentous achievement — the victory — and make sure that everyone feels ownership in it. Praise, bonuses, and other rewards can make it special. This is a unique opportunity to strengthen the bond everyone feels to your organization, especially the special role players who get less attention. 2. Allow pats on the back for a limited time. Then formally return to business as usual by letting everyone know the party is over. Nevertheless, don’t tighten down too far. Victory can produce enormous energy — so powerful and overwhelming that in sports grown men will burst out in tears and run around like little children at Christmas. You must channel that powerful force and enthusiasm into the work ahead to solidify and build on the gains made by your team in achieving their recent success. Make sure the power of your victory propels you forward in a controlled manner. 3. Be apprehensive about applause. Instruct your team on the pitfalls of listening to accolades from those outside (and even inside) the organization. The praise can become a hindrance to buckling down to the hard sacrifice that will be required ahead. Ongoing applause can turn the head of the most disciplined and determined member of your team. Watch that it doesn’t turn your own head. 4. Develop a plan for your staff that gets them back into the mode of operation that produced success in the first place. Don’t assume it will happen. Hold meetings to explain what steps must be taken to sustain momentum; refocus personnel by covering in detail why success was achieved; review with them why they prevailed. 5. Address specific situations that need shoring up; focus on the mistakes that were made and things that were not up to snuff in the success. Point out deficiencies and the need to find remedies for them. 6. Be demanding. Do not relax. Hold everyone to even higher expectations. Don’t relax your Standard of Performance. The Standard of Performance is always in a state of refinement to raise performance. That’s your gold standard, the point of reference above everything else, including the won-lost record, Super Bowl titles, shareholder value, quotas, sales, or praise from people who don’t have to get down in the trenches with you and do the real work. 7. Don’t fall prey to overconfidence so that you feel you can or should make change for the sake of change. Change is inevitable, but change is not a casual consideration. When you’re flush with victory, you can take on a mind-set that says, “Hey, let’s try this!” Only in the most desperate situation is change made simply for the sake of change. 8. Use the time immediately following success as an opportunity to make hard decisions, including elevation or demotion of individuals who contributed — or didn’t — to the victory. This window is brief. Use it. 9. Never fall prey to the belief that getting to the top makes everything easy. In fact, what it makes easier is the job of motivating those who want your spot at the top. Achievement, great success, puts a big bull’s-eye on your back. You are now the target — clearly identified — for all your competitors to aim at. 10. Recognize that mastery is a process, not a destination.

Positive results — winning — count most. But until those results come through your door, a heavy dose of documentation relating to what you’ve done and what you’re doing, planning to do, and hoping to do may buy you just enough extra time to actually do it. Whether they read it or not, flood your superiors with information that is documented — projections, evaluations, reports on progress, status updates. Then ask for periodic meetings. In a very professional way, force them to understand that you’re doing everything you possibly can and that it’s documented; in fact, they’re holding it in that large folder in their hands. Open and honest communication with your superiors, both written and verbal, is a valuable tool in keeping them from coming to the wrong conclusions.

Tips on having a high EQ

Concentrate on what will produce results rather than on the results, the process rather than the prize.
Exhibit an inner toughness emanating from four of the most effective survival tools a leader can possess: expertise, composure, patience, and common sense.
Maintain your level of professional ethics and all details of your own Standard of Performance.
Don’t isolate yourself. Keep in mind that as troubles mount, your relationships with personnel become even more critical. They are the key to holding the staff together. (Don’t get too friendly, however. Familiarity can be deadly.)
Don’t let the magnitude of the challenge take you away from the incremental steps necessary to effect change. Continue to be detail oriented.
Exude an upbeat and determined attitude. Never, ever express doubt, but avoid an inappropriate sunny optimism in dark times.
Hold meetings with staff educating them on what to expect; teach them that the immediate future may be a rough ride but that things will change under your leadership and with their support.
Don’t label some concept or new plan the thing that will “get us back on track.” Keep in mind that simple remedies seldom solve a complex problem.
Ensure that an appropriate level of courtesy and respect is extended to all members of the organization. When things are tough, civility is a great asset.
Don’t plead with employees to “do better.”
Avoid continual threatening or chastising.
Deal with your immediate superior(s) on a one-to-one, ongoing basis. Expect betrayal if results are not immediate. (You extend the time before betrayal occurs by keeping your superiors in the loop.)