Culture is the Key to Success
Winning or losing a sporting event or the success or failure of a business can be seen in two different ways. The most obvious reason is the decisions made by the people in leadership positions. The second way, which is less obvious, is the CULTURE within the team or the company.
Analysts will dissect all of the decisions made by the shot-callers every time there is good fortune or rough seas. The pundits write beautifully about the genius of those who show value, while questioning the abilities of those who struggle.
What they don’t look at, until they are doing the “post-mortem” (when the leadership is cut loose), is what was going on behind closed doors.
Where did the message go bad? Were the problems with the workers, leadership, or ownership, or was it the messaging from the top down? This is where the CULTURE lives. CULTURE is the heart and soul of an organization. Did leadership not have a plan or did they do a bad job in making sure everyone was on the same page?
In my fifty years of watching football (seriously) – I’m sixty, so the first ten I watched it as a fan – I have seen really smart coaches get their butts beat. They rise to the level of being “the man” and then they become “really dumb”, really fast. All those brilliant plays stop working. Personnel issues come up. Game management mistakes become commonplace. Players stop shining. Helmets are thrown. Conflict on the sidelines ensues.
Here is a view from the inside … if there are problems occurring in public things are ten times worse behind closed doors.
And this is where CULTURE comes into play.
A couple of weeks ago Jeff Saturday was named the interim head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts were a few plays from being in the playoffs last year. Things were beginning to go south again this year and the owner, Jim Irsay, fired the head football coach Frank Reich.
I don’t know coach Reich. People who have worked with him speak glowingly about him. But something led the owner to make the move. Irsay didn’t elevate someone from within, which goes against the normal procedure. Instead, he brought in a former player, an offensive lineman, that had played for the team during their “glory years” (those years that Peyton Manning was the QB). Jeff Saturday was an all-pro center. I was a center, so I watched him play. He was really good. Tough guy. Had a high football IQ.
You may not have watched him like I did, but you can’t forget when he stood up to Peyton Manning on the sideline during one game. The two let each other know what they thought, in no uncertain terms. But, like the professionals they are, they worked it out, understanding that they both were competitors who had stepped too far across the line.
Jeff isn’t an offensive guru, nor is he a defensive genius. I think he would agree with that statement. When he was hired, he was an “analyst” on ESPN. He was part of a show called Get Up. He and other former players and coaches would always have the answers the day AFTER the game was played. I always found post-game analysis ridiculous. These coaches, who have all the answers, were all fired from their last job, because they didn’t have the answers. Funny how smart you get when you can step back and watch a game in totality and then decide where the mistakes were made. But if the game is won on a fluke play, the team and the coaches are brilliant. So funny!
The thing that made me laugh was when two former head coaches got ‘butt-hurt’ when the normal protocol of bringing up an assistant to the head coaching position was pushed aside. They said it was a “slap in the face” to all coaches to bring in someone from the outside. That made me laugh … hard!
One of them said he received dozens of calls from other coaches with the same attitude. Here’s the thing … does anyone know what was going on inside the building. Maybe Irsay had conversations with other coaches on staff and didn’t think they could change the way the team was headed. Maybe Irsay didn’t want to overload the coordinators by tagging them with a “head coach” title.
Did anyone stop and think, maybe it wasn’t the play-calling. Maybe the Xs and Os were just fine.
Maybe, just maybe, it was the CULTURE within the building that was the problem.
Again, I don’t have any inside information. Apparently, there was something wrong. I remember watching the “Hard Knocks” documentary series on HBO when the Colts were the subject of the show. I always thought that there was very little “energy” in any of the scenes. I know they didn’t show ALL of the meetings or ALL of the interactions between players and the coaches. But as I watched the show come to an end I would think, “Geez that was boring.”
It may have been because I had been in the building with one of the all-time great motivators for the last eighteen years of my coaching career. Rarely was a meeting just a “meeting”. There were events, competitions, themes for the day, breaking news, ‘Come to Jesus meetings’ (when things were getting frayed). The music playing loudly, basketballs being shot, the energy was rolling and this was before a Wednesday meeting. I’m talking about meetings where coaches would do full-blown “production” value presentations. All the tricks were used. On Turn Over Thursday Coach Rocky Seto would have examples of How to punch a ball out, with video and sound effects. There was never a meeting where a coach droned on with a bunch of numbers. These dramatic talks and high-energy motivational stunts kept the players tuned in and excited. The season can get long. But if you electrified the room with anticipation, learning and laughter, the meeting became an event.
After word of the meetings got around the facility there would be standing room only in the back of a packed-full meeting room for my Hey, Coach C, Where the F#*K Are We Going. Scouts, secretaries, custodians, chefs, and finance people would come down to watch the meetings. Cheers and jeers would greet the coaches as they came up to do their part of the meeting. What a great environment. It was a direct reflection of the head football coach.
The CULTURE of the team is built during these times.
This is the energy that the players took to the field. Will Farrell showing up dressed like Ricky Bobby or Captain Compete. It might be basketball legend Bill Russell passing on his wisdom.
The players loved the fun, and they reciprocated the fun with their hard work. It was a great lesson in team building. Work hard when it’s time to work, and have all of the fun you can have when that time was at hand. The common denominator of all teams is that there are long hours, days, weeks, and months during the season. To break the stress of being together all the time there must be opportunities to relieve the pressure and stress. The CULTURE within the facility did just that. It was a joy to go into the facility, I couldn’t even call it “work” … and most of the players didn’t either.
And that was a big reason why we won. Coordinators came and went. Assistants moved on. Players changed. But we kept winning and winning and winning. Players who came in from other teams fought harder to stay part of the organization because they had seen how other teams had done this thing and they didn’t want to go back to the boring system they had been with. When players left us they always spoke about the fun they had when they were with us.
CULTURE is the way you live your life as part of a family, or an organization.
You can trudge through the shit and do the work and get paid or you can come into an environment that was fun. We still spent times in meetings. When we were really good, practices were hard. We won games. The difference was how the CULTURE made the mundane enjoyable.
If all things were the same, as far as success, which environment would you want to be part of? One that is high stress and walking on eggshells and dreading each time you walked into the facility or one where you had fun and couldn’t wait for the next day? Kind of a silly question right?
There are some teams who have more of a stoic and Spartan environment. And they win too.
This begs the question then; “What is the “right” CULTURE”? Since both CULTURES are on opposite ends of the coaching string and they both can win what is the answer?
The answer is simple. The leaders of successful organizations were being who they were. They were not mimicking anyone else. They were being true to their personality.
Too many times young people try to be like their boss. They think that if I talk like them, act like them, work like them I can achieve the same results. That is the farthest thing from the truth.
Successful leaders have a great strength. They know who they are.
Bill Belichick tried to act like his mentor, Bill Parcells, when he took the Cleveland Browns job. Things didn’t work out for Belichick and he was eventually fired. When he had the opportunity to go to the Patriots, he told himself to be true to who he was, if that wasn’t good enough, he may not be cut out to be a head coach in the NFL. After he came to the conclusion to be himself he has gone on to be regarded as one of the best coaches in the NFL.
Nick Saban won a BCS Championship at LSU. He left there to become the head coach in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins. It didn’t work out. HE went back to college and has become one of the most successful coaches in college football history.
Pete Carroll worked with a bunch of great coaches in the NFL, Lou Holtz at Arkansas, Monte Kiffin at North Carolina State and The Buffalo Bills, Bud Grant with the Vikings, George Siefert with the 49ers. He became the head coach with the New York Jets and the New England Patriots. Both jobs lasted three seasons before he was removed from both jobs. It took a season away from the game to figure out who he was as a coach.
Sean McVay has a similar upbringing in his coaching life. His grandfather was a huge part of the success of the San Fransisco 49ers during the Bill Walsh and George Seifert runs. And then working with Mike Shanahan with the Washington NFL Team (Commanders). He hit the ground running with his first head coaching job. He had a down year and then came back to win a Super Bowl. This season is another struggle, it will be interesting to see how he holds the team together. If they stay balanced and bounce back you know there is a strong culture. If not … we’ll have to wait till his time comes to an end.
In all of the examples I gave of the successful coaches, even though they went about their daily work differently, the thing that they all had in common was that they understand WHO THEY ARE.
This understanding is felt within the facility. The consistency of the message. The way that people are treated. The trust that is developed, will outweigh the play-calling every single time.
That is the strength of a great CULTURE. Be the best YOU!
Let’s watch Jeff Saturday. He beat a struggling Las Vegas Raiders in his first outing and then couldn’t close the game out against one of the best teams in the league, the Philadelphia Eagles. If he is able to instill balance within the “locker room” the team will stay competitive. If there are deeper issues Jeff will go back to ESPN and a new head coach will come in and will inject his beliefs and rules and the way he treats people, this will be his CULTURE. And we will see what difference it makes.
Life is nothing but dozens of sociological studies going on. Take time to sit back and watch how they work themselves out.
Take notes and apply the answers to how they fit into YOUR personality so in the end you develop YOUR CULTURE in your work space.
