by Bill Walsh
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Foreword
PART I - My Standard of Performance: An Environment of Excellence
How to Know if You’re Doing the Job
Coaches Aren’t Supposed to Cry: Survive One Minute at a Time
My Standard of Performance: High Requirements for Actions and Attitudes
An Organization Has a Conscience
Specifics of My New Standards
The Prime Directive Was Not Victory
The Top Priority Is Teaching
Winners Act Like Winners (Before They’re Winners)
Seek to Be Near the Summit
Establishing Your Standard of Performance
How I Avoid Becoming a Victim of Myself
THE WALSH WAY - The Organization Man
PART II - Success Is Not Spelled G-E-N-I-U-S: Innovation, Planning, and Common Sense
Opportunity Is in the Eye of the Beholder
The West Coast Offense: From Checkers to Chess
Lessons of the Bill Walsh Offense
Welcome Skeptics to Your Team
Share the Glory
Write Your Own Script for Success: Flying by the Seat of Your Pants (Is No Way ...
Control What You Can Control: Let the Score Take Care of Itself
Protect Your Blind Side: The Leadership Two-Step: Move/Countermove
The Archaeology of Leadership: Seek Reward in the Ruins
THE WALSH WAY - The Problem Solver
PART III - Fundamentals of Leadership: Concepts, Conceits, and Conclusions
“I Am the Leader!”
The Common Denominator of Leadership: Strength of Will
Be Wrong for the Right Reasons
Protect Your Turf
Be a Leader—Twelve Habits Plus One
Sweat the Right Small Stuff: Sharp Pencils Do Not Translate into Sharp Performance
Good Leadership Percolates Down
Nameless, Faceless Objects
The Rules May Change, But the Game Goes On: I Strike Out the First Time, Not ...
You Must Have a Hard Edge
The Inner Voice vs. the Outer Voice
Montana’s Leadership by Example: Cool, Calm, and Collected
Don’t Let Anybody Call You a Genius
The Leverage of Language
Don’t Beat Around the Bush (When Describing a Bush)
Don’t Mistake Grabbin’ for Tackling
Communication Creates Collaboration: Big Ears Are Better Than Big Egos
Be a King Without a Crown
Create Uncertainty
Play with Poise
Teaching Defines Your Leadership
The Thrill of Teaching
THE WALSH WAY - The House Cleaner
PART IV - Essentials of a Winning Team: People, Priorities, and Performance
Money Talks. Treating People Right Talks Louder.
You’re as Good as Your Good People
The Over and Under: The Art of Managing Confidence
The Under: Strive to Be a One-Point Underdog
Seek Character. Beware Characters.
A Big Cheer for a Big Ego
The Bottom 20 Percent May Determine Your Success
Avoid the Dance of the Doomed
Use the Four Most Powerful Words
Extreme Effort Requires Extreme Prudence
The Bubba Diet: You Can’t Transplant Willpower
“Conventional Wisdom” Is an Oxymoron
Make Friends, Not Enemies: Al Davis, Howard Cosell, and Monday Night Football
Hold on Until Help Arrives: Keep Your Boss in the Loop
Keep Your Eye on the Ball
Make Your Own Mentors: A PhD from the University of Paul Brown, et al.
THE WALSH WAY - The Fog Cutter
PART V - Thin Skin, Baloney, and “The Star-Spangled Banner”: Looking for ...
How You Get Good: No Mystery to Mastery
Sine Qua Non: Your Work Ethic—What William Archibald Walsh Taught His Son
The Perfection of the Puzzle
The Gladiator Mentality: Get Your Mind Right
I Never Sang “The Star-Spangled Banner”
My Strengths?
Unleash Mentors: Tell Your Team to Teach
Don’t Do unto Others (What Paul Brown Did unto Me)
Nine Steps for a Healthy Heart
Seriously, Don’t Be Too Serious
The Last Word on Getting in the Last Word
Thinly Sliced Baloney (Can Make a Good Sandwich)
Surprising News Re: The Element of Surprise
Don’t Delay Delegating (Famous Last Words: “I’ll Do It Myself”)
Cut Your Losses Before They Cut You
Look Below the Surface: There’s More Than Meets the Eye
A Pretty Package Can’t Sell a Poor Product
Zero Points for Winning (Means You’re Losing)
What Do I Miss Least?
What Do I Miss Most?
Quick Results Come Slowly: The Score Takes Care of Itself
THE WALSH WAY - A Complex Man. A Simple Goal.
Index
PORTFOLIO
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2009 by Portfolio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Craig Walsh and Steve Jamison, 2009
All rights reserved
Excerpts from Finding the Winning Edge by Bill Walsh with Brian Billick and James A. Peterson
(Sports Publishing). Copyright © 1998 by Bill Walsh.
eISBN : 978-1-101-10901-4
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Acknowledgments
Craig Walsh
My father would want to acknowledge and thank Eddie DeBartolo Jr., the only owner who had the foresight and courage to give Bill Walsh a chance to be a head coach in the NFL.
He would also want to express his deep dedication and appreciation to all the people who wore the San Francisco 49er uniform both on th
e field or off—the entire organization who helped make a dream come true.
I would also like to dedicate our book to my children, Nate and Saman tha. I know their grandfather is very proud of them just as they are proud of him. This book is also dedicated to my mother, Geri, my sister, Elizabeth, and the memory of my brother, Steve.
Steve Jamison
The Score Takes Care of Itself is dedicated with a lot of love to my mother, Mary Jean Edstrom. And, to my father, Everett, his brother, Harold, and their friend Roger Busdicker who created magic when they created Hal Leonard Publishing—my introduction to the world of publishing. Also, to Bill Walsh, Coach John Wooden, Uncle Roy Stark, David Varner, Aunt Jo Edstrom. And, lest we forget, the great publishing mind of Jeffrey Krames made it all happen.
Running a football franchise is not unlike running any other business: You start first with a structural format and basic philosophy and then find the people who can implement it.
—BILL WALSH
A Leader’s Book for Leaders
Craig Walsh
My father, Bill Walsh, was one of the NFL’s pivotal figures, a leader, head coach, and general manager whose innovations changed the way football is played and whose San Francisco 49er dynasty—five Super Bowl championships in fourteen years—ranks among the great achievements in sports history. The Score Takes Care of Itself is his very personal and, at times, painful account of the leadership lessons he learned during his life as well as his conclusions on how they might be useful in overcoming your own challenges as a leader.
Obviously, every profession has many elements unique unto itself. Nevertheless, when it comes to the fundamentals of effective leadership in the context of human nature and managing people, there are great parallels among the NFL, corporate America, or a grocery store with twelve employees. At least, Bill Walsh thought so.
The applicability of what he did in the NFL to the world of business is attested to by the fact that many CEOs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere not only were among his friends but also sought his advice and invited him to speak about leadership to their executive teams. After his retirement as head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, he did the same at Stanford University, where he gave lectures on leadership to graduate students at the business school. The Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and other magazines and business publications regularly came to him for ideas on team building and leadership beyond the context of football.
You might wonder about the origins of the title. The Score Takes Care of Itself was one of my dad’s oft-told sayings. Do all the right things to precision and “the score will take care of itself” sums up my father’s philosophy, which is why we thought it the perfect title for his book.
It is the ultimate guidebook to the Bill Walsh philosophy and methodology of leadership and is drawn from my father’s revealing and extensive conversations on the subject with best-selling author Steve Jamison. We have also utilized my father’s private notes, including those for his lectures at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and video- and audiotapes of talks that he gave to the 49ers, as well as intimate conversations I had with him over his years as head coach about how he was doing it—and what it was doing to him.
Additionally, we’ve included concise but revealing and frank opinions about my father from five key “players” in his professional life, each chosen for a specific reason:1. Joe Montana was the quarterback whom my father drafted in his first year as head coach at San Francisco. Joe was at the helm for all of the Super Bowl championships coached by my father, and his comments on how Bill Walsh could make dreams come true, “His Standard of Performance,” is a master’s analysis of a master and the foreword for the book.
2. John McVay, vice president and director of football operations for my father, offers insights into the great skills Bill Walsh exhibited when it came to getting the right people on the same page of the same book—a book written by Bill Walsh. “The Organization Man” is John’s overview of the superb organization he saw put in place very quickly by the new coach, who could see a connection between wearing a tie and winning a Super Bowl.
3. Mike White was one of my father’s true pals, a fellow assistant coach at the University of California-Berkeley who later worked for him in the beginning at San Francisco. Mike labored with Bill Walsh professionally at those two crucial points in his career and understood him inside and out. “The Problem Solver” is his description of the “spectacular” creative and analytical skills he saw demonstrated right from the beginning. Bill Walsh had very few intimate friends, but Mike White was one of those guys.
4. Bill McPherson was a defensive assistant coach through the entire decade that Bill Walsh was at the helm of the 49ers, an insider who saw firsthand how my father came in and cleaned house. If you didn’t “get with the program,” as defined by Bill Walsh, you were gone. “The House Cleaner” is Bill McPherson’s description of those rough early months when Bill Walsh started building a dynasty by dismantling a disaster.
5. Randy Cross, a great offensive lineman and now a top CBS football analyst, was a member of the San Francisco 49ers for thirteen years, including his first three, which were pre-Bill Walsh seasons. He was chosen because he experienced, as a player, what life was like on the worst team in the NFL and how Bill Walsh transformed it into the best. “The Fog Cutter” is Randy’s keen perspective on the tumultuous events that were part of the creation of a dynasty by his new head coach and general manager.
These five, all important figures in my father’s life, were asked to contribute their analyses of the leadership philosophy of Bill Walsh to complement and expand on the comprehensive lessons my father offers in The Score Takes Care of Itself. Others certainly were well qualified, but these five were asked and kindly accepted the invitation to more fully explain the “genius” of Bill Walsh.
Nevertheless, there is only one person who can fully articulate what he did, why it worked, and how it may benefit you as a leader; namely, Bill Walsh. In his own words, this book is his explanation.
My father’s journey was arduous, but his dream was big: Bill Walsh wanted to be a successful head coach in the NFL more than anything else in the world. As he moved his family back and forth across the country, he chased his dream, from the Oakland Raiders and the San Jose Apaches to the Cincinnati Bengals, San Diego Chargers, and Stanford University. Ultimately, the dream came true: head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. The lessons he learned he wanted to share. My father is no longer with us, but I know he would be proud that his hard-earned lessons are now available in his book, The Score Takes Care of Itself.
FOREWORD
His Standard of Performance
Joe Montana
I never saw a regular-season NFL game in person until I was a player in the NFL—watching from the sidelines as a rookie backup quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers during a game against the Minnesota Vikings. It was my first game as a pro. Bill Walsh was my coach.
We lost that game to the Vikings (28-22) as well as thirteen of our next fifteen games; fans were unhappy, and critics were howling and having a field day at our expense because all they could see was our 2-14 won-lost record. But I had my own opinion: Bill Walsh was special.
His mind for technical football was extraordinary, but beyond that was his ability to organize and manage his staff, players, everybody—to get the whole organization on exactly the same page. On that page he set the standard for how he wanted things done, and his standard was simple: perfection. That’s what he taught us individually and as a group—to believe it could be achieved and then achieve it (or come close). He had in his mind this ideal—an image of perfect football—coupled with the nuts-and-bolts details of how to accomplish it, which he then taught.
That, in my opinion, was his primary leadership asset: his ability to teach people how to think and play at a different and much higher, and, at times, perfect level. He accomplished this in three ways: (1) he had a tremendous knowledge of all aspects of the game and a v
isionary approach to offense; (2) he brought in a great staff and coaches who knew how to coach, how to complement his own teaching of what we needed to know to rise to his standard of performance; and (3) he taught us to hate mistakes.
Bill got all of us striving to be perfect in games and practice. (You didn’t want to see any balls on the ground, no fumbles, no mistakes, no turnovers.) Without all the screaming that coaches usually do, he was very focused and demanding because he was making you test yourself, take yourself to different limits. He said that if you aim for perfection and miss, you’re still pretty good, but if you aim for mediocre and miss? Well, he didn’t allow us to think like that.
That was the thing about his perspective: Being really good wasn’t good enough. He taught us to want to be perfect and instilled in the team a hunger for improvement, a drive to get better and better. We saw his own hunger for perfection, and it was contagious.
In fact, that was the biggest challenge in playing for Bill—trying to be perfect. It applied to everyone on the team, everyone in the organization, but it seemed like it especially applied to his quarterback. He expected a lot from his quarterback.
Bill just assumed I was supposed to be great and didn’t praise me routinely. The quarterback didn’t get the game ball, didn’t get a load of compliments. Win a Super Bowl? Yes, then you’d get praise from Bill, but otherwise he didn’t believe his starting quarterback needed a lot of praise for doing what he was being paid to do.
You might think that trying to meet his extremely high expectations would tighten you up, but Bill didn’t jump on you for a mistake; he came right in with the correction: “Here’s what was wrong; this is how to do it right.” Over and over, without getting all upset, he taught the smallest details of perfecting performance.
He had this little way of taking the pressure off with a comment or, on occasion, some sarcasm. Humor was one of his assets. One time, to emphasize the dress code, he had all the assistant coaches come into a meeting wearing outfits that were ridiculous. One was dressed like a bum, another like a hippie, and somebody was wearing tights, a dress, and falsies—that may have been Bill. He said something like, “Now, we don’t want to look like this on the road, do we?” He made a serious point with humor.
