Game Plans for Success

By Brian Moran
President
Moran Media Group

In recognition of Superbowl XLII, I thought I would share some quotes from a very good book I read almost a decade ago.

The book is called Game Plans for Success: Winning Strategies for Business and Life from 10 Top NFL Head Coaches. If you like football, this is a fun read with some great advice. Below are some of the tidbits that I highlighted, circled or put stars around as I read the book. Ten years later, they are still as relevant as ever.

From Joe Gibbs:

• There is an old football saying: The will to win is meaningless without the will to prepare.

• With good preparation, you greatly reduce the margin for error.

• Unless you have a quantitative way of measuring performance, you are operating in a vacuum. You cannot compete that way.

• I believe that picking the right people is the single most important thing a coach or boss can do. If you pick sharp, highly motivated people, you are going to be successful.

From Mike Ditka:

• It is very important for the head of any organization, whether it is a football team, a major corporation, or a corner store, to have a clear idea of what his business stands for. If you cannot define what it is you want to be, then you’re not going to be much of anything.

• If you want to win, you find people who have that quality and put them on your team. In business, you find good people who relish the idea of being part of something successful, of helping to build it and see it grow. You recruit them and then run with them.

• You must spell out your program, describe what your goals are, what your methods are for reaching those goals, how you expect to attain them. And that’s it. In football, we call it a game plan. You MUST have one.

• Your people must not lose sight of why they are with you, what their roles within your organization are, and how they can contribute. When the distractions of building a resume, tracking a career path, or monitoring outside investments become more important than everyday performance, I think you have to step in and set valuable employees straight. Or risk losing them, or having to cut them.

From Dennis Green:

• If you are the boss, you must have the courage to make certain demands. If you shrug you shoulders, look the other way and say, “Oh well, that’s good enough,” you never will fix what’s wrong with the business. It doesn’t mean being a tyrant, just someone who understands his responsibility to each individual and the group as a whole.

From Bill Walsh:

• You have to be committed enough to your ideas to stick it out. The worst thing you can do is kill an idea before it has a chance to develop.

• In business, you can have a brilliant idea, but it has to be weighed against what is practical. An innovative plan has merit only if the workforce is able to carry it out. If you are the idea man, you can’t be so bull-headed that you refuse to listen to reason.

• One mistake I feel some coaching staffs make—and many company staffs as well—is that while they may plan, they don’t contingency plan. Before a plan being formulated is approved, someone needs to ask, “If this starts to fail, what will we do?” If a person has the courage to bring that possibility up, and the other people in a planning meeting are smart enough to listen, then a contingency plan can be developed.

From Tom Coughlin:

• The key to surviving is keeping faith in yourself. No matter how bleak things may appear, you have to maintain belief in what you are doing as head coach. Lose that and you lose everything.

The other coaches profiled included: George Seifert, Bud Grant, Norv Turner, Marty Schottenheimer and Chuck Noll. If you can find it online or in a bookstore, I highly recommend it as a good play book for your business.

Carpe Diem!