From "The Score Takes Care of Itself" by Bill Walsh with Steve Jamison and Craig Walsh. My Standard of Performance: High Requirements for Actions and Attitudes
I approached building the 49er organization with an agenda that didn’t include a timetable for a championship or even a winning season. Instead, I arrived with a n urgent timetable for installing an agenda of specific behavioral norms – actions and attitudes – that applied to every single person on our payroll.
To put it bluntly, I would teach each person in the organization what to do and how to thing. The short-term results would contribute both symbolically and functionally to a new and productive self-image and environment and become the foundation upon which we could launch our longer-term goal, namely, the resurrection of a football franchise.
While I prized preparation, planning, precision, and poise, I also knew that organizational ethics were crucial to ultimate and ongoing success
It began with this fundamental leadership assertion: Regardless of your specific job, it is vital to our team that you do that job at the highest possible level in all its various aspects, both mental and physical (i.e., good talent with bad attitude equals bad talent).
An Organization Has a Conscience
Beyond the mechanical elements of doing jobs correctly, I assisted coaches, players, staff, and others in assimilating the values within my Standard of Performance, including what I believed regarding personal accountability among the organization and its personnel. This is consistent with my conviction that an organization is not just a tool like a shovel, but an organic entity that has a code of conduct, a set of applied principles that go beyond a company mission statement that’s tacked on the wall and forgotten. In fact, we had no mission statement on the wall. My mission statement was implanted in the minds of our people through teaching.
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.
I approached building the 49er organization with an agenda that didn’t include a timetable for a championship or even a winning season. Instead, I arrived with a n urgent timetable for installing an agenda of specific behavioral norms – actions and attitudes – that applied to every single person on our payroll.
To put it bluntly, I would teach each person in the organization what to do and how to thing. The short-term results would contribute both symbolically and functionally to a new and productive self-image and environment and become the foundation upon which we could launch our longer-term goal, namely, the resurrection of a football franchise.
While I prized preparation, planning, precision, and poise, I also knew that organizational ethics were crucial to ultimate and ongoing success
It began with this fundamental leadership assertion: Regardless of your specific job, it is vital to our team that you do that job at the highest possible level in all its various aspects, both mental and physical (i.e., good talent with bad attitude equals bad talent).
An Organization Has a Conscience
Beyond the mechanical elements of doing jobs correctly, I assisted coaches, players, staff, and others in assimilating the values within my Standard of Performance, including what I believed regarding personal accountability among the organization and its personnel. This is consistent with my conviction that an organization is not just a tool like a shovel, but an organic entity that has a code of conduct, a set of applied principles that go beyond a company mission statement that’s tacked on the wall and forgotten. In fact, we had no mission statement on the wall. My mission statement was implanted in the minds of our people through teaching.
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.
