"Process guarantees success," says Saban. "A good process produces good results."
As we review the year's end and make our economic and market forecasts for 2014, what lessons can we learn from the success of Alabama football?
Process is about control and focusing your efforts where you have the most control. Consequentially Saban doesn't focus on or talk about winning. Winning is an outcome and not something he can control. Instead, the focus is on effort and activities that applied consistently tend to result in success.
Nick's Paradox: "The more one emphasizes winning, the less he or she is able to concentrate on what actually causes success."
Saban, his staff and the team focus on perfecting the process.
"Eliminate the clutter and all of the things that are going on outside and focus on the things that you can control with how you go about and take care of your business," Saban says. "Take the other team out of the game and make it all about you and what you do." In their book, "Decisive," the Heath brothers detail how human decision-making is disrupted by irrationalities and biases. They state that we often put our faith in careful analysis and skip process, the softer, less analytical side of decision making:
"When researchers compared whether process or analysis was more important to making good decisions -- they discovered that process mattered more than analysis by a factor of six. But the reverse was not true: Superb analysis is useless unless the decision process gives it a fair hearing."
Although it may sound easy to adopt, a process mentality is very difficult to maintain. The noise of results can become so deafening at times that it feels impossible to remain disciplined toward the process.
