by Bill Walsh
Somehow in my mind I believed that I was the best qualified to do almost every job, especially when it came to the offensive part of our game. In one sense, it stemmed from confidence; I was absolutely sure that if I did the job it would not get screwed up. Well, that can only take you so far. Pretty soon you’re on overload while very talented people in the organization are being underutilized.
For example, Mike Holmgren, a superb assistant coach who eventually won a Super Bowl while head coach of the Green Bay Packers, was on my staff and could have taken on much more responsibility than I gave him. (The year immediately following my retirement, the 49ers won Super Bowl XXIV against the Denver Broncos 55-10, an all-time scoring record. Mike was calling the plays.)
There were others, too, on my staff who were able and willing to take on more responsibilities. They were willing; I was reluctant, even unwilling—unable is perhaps more accurate. Of the various failures I cite myself for, one of the most problematic may have been my inability to delegate to the extent I could, and should, have. Increasingly, I continued to take on massive responsibilities. I appeared to be in full control—and I think I was—but the exhaustion I experienced, the track I was on, offered no escape. I couldn’t take a real vacation because there was always more and more to do, and I felt, rightly or wrongly, that Bill Walsh was the one best able to handle too many of the various responsibilities. Well, that kind of thinking can only take you so far. Eventually, you’re working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day with little good sleep, eating poorly, and dealing with all kinds of forces. You burn your energy like an acetylene torch until your nerves are completely stretched and then virtually destroyed. It took me years to figure this out, to learn it, to understand it. By then I was no longer head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.
You may suspect you need to be delegating more, but you can’t bring yourself to do it; you can’t summon in yourself a trust in others whose talent you respected enough to hire them. I should have had more of a plan or commitment to move other people into different roles and to let them emerge, to loosen my grip on control, but I couldn’t, and the exhaustion I experienced, the track I was on, was partially the direct result of not being able to delegate more intelligently.
There was always something to do, and I was the one most capable of doing it—or so I thought.
Cut Your Losses Before They Cut You
Thomas Henderson was not only one of the best linebackers in NFL history, but a very intelligent man—one of the great athletes to play the game. He was also one of the most flamboyant during his years with the Dallas Cowboys. His nickname was appropriate: “Hollywood.”
Unfortunately, by the time he joined the 49ers during my first year as head coach, a more apt moniker would have been “Cocaine” Henderson, because he was a serious addict whose life was coming apart.
In fact, when my wife, Geri, and I had Thomas and his wife, Wyetta, over for dinner at our home in Menlo Park, California, shortly before he officially joined San Francisco, he excused himself briefly while the apple pie and ice cream were being served. Later, I discovered he had gone into our bathroom to snort cocaine.
I was aware that Thomas had become somewhat difficult during his final years with Tom Landry’s Cowboys—violating curfews, breaking dress code rules, increasingly contentious and criticizing the coaching staff, even mugging on the sidelines for the television cameras—but I thought that with my supposed ability to work with problem players, I could get him back on track. Plus, in that first year as head coach, I was desperate for talent—especially on our defensive team.
However, it soon became evident that my abilities were no match for the destructive power of Henderson’s addiction. (In fact, in those days most coaches were ignorant when it came to hard drug use among players. The most common drug being abused was alcohol. When a player had a problem with it, the symptoms were evident the next day—a big hangover. The cure was simple: Work him hard and make him suffer. Throwing up over on the sidelines in ninety-degree heat usually solved the problem for a while. Cocaine was much more insidious.)
When it soon became apparent that things weren’t going to work out between “Hollywood” and the 49ers, he began talking about injuries—most of all a neck problem that kept him out of practice. Keep in mind that neck injuries are often difficult to diagnose and consequently easy to feign.
In truth, and in light of “Hollywood’s” recent behavior, we had no idea whether or not he was injured or faking it. Thus, it appeared the 49ers might not only be unable to trade him, but have to pay for an “injury” that was imaginary or had happened when he was with Dallas.
It all came to a boiling point during practice one afternoon, with “Hollywood” stretched out and moaning on our locker room floor—spread-eagled while players gingerly stepped over him to get out to the practice field. It was completely disordered and a serious distraction. I realized we needed to remove him from the environment—that is, get him off the roster—quickly, while at the same time avoiding a lawsuit related to his neck issues.
I used his ego to solve the problem. “Hollywood,” I said, leaning over him, “this next game of ours is televised nationally. The whole country is going to be watching, and you’re one of the guys the cameras are going to be zooming in on. We absolutely need you out on the field to run through some plays today. Otherwise, you won’t be ready to go into the game and your family and friends are going to be very disappointed when they don’t see you on network television.”
“Hollywood” loved attention. With the prospect of national television exposure in the balance, he “struggled” to his feet and ran out to the practice field.
Meanwhile, my assistants were ready. Three cameras had been set up in the stands to tape “Hollywood” slamming into people with great zest and without the slightest discomfort. We had our evidence and released him immediately. I don’t know if “Hollywood” ever found out that our upcoming game was not scheduled for network television.
The lesson is simple: When you make a mistake, admit it and fix it. Don’t let pride, stubbornness, or possible embarrassment about your bad decision prevent you from correcting what you have done. Fix it, or the little problem becomes a big one.
The ending to this story about Thomas Henderson is positive, although it took a while. Soon after his release from San Francisco, he was out of football and in trouble, including serving time in jail. Eventually, however, he overcame his addiction to drugs and alcohol and got his life back on track. That’s the biggest game Thomas Henderson ever won. I’m only sorry he couldn’t have achieved that victory while a member of the San Francisco 49ers.
Look Below the Surface: There’s More Than Meets the Eye
You must be willing to account for a person’s emotions and state of mind when you judge his or her actions. Frequently we misinterpret behavior because we don’t allow for explanations other than what is most obvious; we don’t look below the surface. Here’s an example from my own experience.
During my last season as head coach, I began suffering from emotional and mental exhaustion brought on by the demands and pressures of my job that had been building up in my mind for several years. The inner toll this took is indescribable. It became almost torturous and manifested itself during the last months in my becoming increasingly sentimental about things and, at times, maudlin. All of it was, of course, related to exhaustion.
I would frequently be on the edge of breaking down in tears and started to protect myself to keep it from happening. Consequently, and without telling anyone, I decided I had to retire at the end of the season.
A week before we played in Super Bowl XXIII, I did a television interview in which the topic eventually turned to my feelings about the team. Well, this really got to me because of my fragile emotional state. The woman interviewing me had no ulterior motive; she was simply interested in knowing if I felt any different about these players compared with earlier 49er teams and had no idea her question would evoke ov
erwhelming emotion in me.
I could feel myself starting to come apart as I considered her question and realized if I said even one word I was going to break down and start crying in front of a camera. Since I had no interest in sobbing on television, I abruptly stood up and walked off the set. The studio personnel were stunned, and the story subsequently went out that Bill Walsh, in becoming a successful coach, had also become arrogant and uncivil, a person who would truncate a conversation by standing and storming out of the room. This, of course, was incorrect.
It’s important to understand a person’s response in the context of his or her state of mind, where he or she might be emotionally; this often connects directly to his or her answers and actions. This reporter decided I was an arrogant, strutting personality who would simply walk out when I had had enough. In reality, she missed the point. Something big was going on, and she didn’t get it, didn’t go beneath the surface of what she saw.
She didn’t even consider any other explanation. She missed the larger story in settling for the obvious answer.
A Pretty Package Can’t Sell a Poor Product
Even before I joined the 49ers, it was apparent that their public image was deeply damaged, almost as bad as their won-lost record. In a sense, I had a front-row seat, because I was coaching at Stanford University, which is right in the middle of the San Francisco 49ers’ fan base.
Subsequently, when I came aboard as head coach and general manager of the 49ers, I was concerned not only with the specifics of what happened on the field, but also with crucial off-field matters such as selling tickets, in particular season tickets. Our season ticket sales were awful, the worst in the league—7,012 in a stadium that held over 60,000 people. I immediately set to work beefing up those sales so that our 2-14 team would have bigger crowds to play in front of and the owner would have larger gate receipts.
In an attempt to do this, I tried to reach out to the community, to repair the damaged image the public had of us. I made sure the players and staff lent their support and presence to good causes, were available for interviews, and responded to correspondence.
To promote sales of season tickets, I came up with an ambitious (and time-consuming) plan called “Pick-a-Seat Day” in which we put bright red ribbons on all available season ticket seats and invited the public to buy their favorites. And that’s not all.
On the big promotion day we offered balloons, free donkey rides, ethnic foods, and clowns for the kiddies. Also, free popcorn, soft drinks and hot dogs, jugglers, a Dixieland band, and magicians. It was really a great family event for the thousands of folks who came out to Candlestick Park.
The next morning I arrived at the office early to see what the results of my “Pick-a-Seat Day” promotion were. Or, more accurately, weren’t. Total season tickets sold: seven. (I bought three more myself on the fifty-yard line, just so I could report that we’d hit double digits. In fact, our family still has those seats.)
“Pick-a-Seat Day” was a total flop, but it was a flop that taught me something very important: A pretty package can’t sell a poor product. Results—in my profession, winning football games—are the ultimate promotional tool. I was trying to sell a bad product, a team that was the worst franchise in sports, that had lost twenty-seven straight road games, and whose record at home wasn’t much better.
From that point on, I focused my energies exclusively on creating a quality product, a team that was worth spending money to see. When that was achieved, we also achieved a ten-year waiting list to buy a 49ers’ season ticket.
In your efforts to create interest in your own product, don’t get carried away with premature promotion—creating a pretty package with hype, spin, and all the rest. First, make sure you’ve got something of quality to promote. Then worry about how you’re going to wrap it in an attractive package. The world’s best promotional tool is a good product.
Zero Points for Winning (Means You’re Losing)
Part of the makeup of many people with a very strong competitive instinct, whether in sports or business—especially those who are more intelligent—is that they know just how much losing hurts and don’t like that feeling; they just can’t accept it.
Losing is so devastating to them that it’s just thorough; there isn’t anything that can stop the pain except winning. For those people, I think probably in the majority at the top end of the competitive scale, it’s almost impossible to accept defeat and the feelings of desolation that go with it. Consequently, we’ll do almost anything to avoid it.
That anxiety about failure, that disgust with failure, that fear of failure is really a distinct part of competition and must be absolutely under your control. Unfortunately, this is often very hard to do—at least it was for me and took four or five years off of my coaching career at San Francisco.
Losing, however you define it, even the thought of losing, can become so psychologically crippling that winning offers little solace and no cause for celebration because you’ve imposed an internal accounting system on yourself that awards zero points for winning and minus points for losing. You can never get ahead on points. That’s exactly what happened to me.
I see the symptom all the time in business. Study the faces of some executives or salespeople when they achieve a big “win.” The best description of their demeanor is “grim-faced,” and grim-faced they trudge cheerlessly on to fight without comment. They have allotted themselves zero points for victory.
This can occur as your expectations and the expectations of others get higher and higher—they keep raising the bar on you, and you keep raising it on yourself.
In my early years as an assistant coach, and then later in the beginning with the 49ers, simply teaching our personnel how to execute and perform at higher levels provided satisfaction and gratification. Seeing areas of our game reflect that improvement—increased yards per carry, fewer turnovers, higher pass completion percentages, and fewer penalties—allowed me to take pride in various elements of a loss. We hadn’t yet reached the point of being expected to win every game, every Super Bowl.
Later, good play and execution were still able to produce satisfaction, but only if accompanied by a win. Eventually, good play and execution, even when accompanied by victory, produced virtually no ongoing satisfaction or pleasure, just momentary relief. I got zero points for winning.
Victory meant little more than delaying the pain of loss, as I quickly turned to the next game and the next one and the next one, each offering no more than the opportunity to postpone the awful feelings that accompany defeat while doing nothing to remove the fear of it.
When this happens, any kind of loss, mistake, or setback becomes very disturbing, even devastating, because you’ve attached your self-image to the results of the competition. Winning can become insidious for the same reason, that is, you allow the victory to begin determining your self-worth, how you feel about yourself.
Either way, you are putting yourself on a slippery slope when you start believing that the outcome of your effort represents or embodies who you really are as a person—what your value as a person is. I speak from personal experience.
For me, the San Francisco 49ers increasingly became who “Bill Walsh” was on the inside. Any mistake or loss became me. Any setback—big or small—reflected back on me, and I personalized it. If Jerry Rice dropped a pass, I dropped it; if a play didn’t work, it was my fault, instead of the fault of the assistant coach who called it or the opposing defensive player who made an outstanding stop; if Steve Young or Joe Montana threw an interception, it was my poor pass. This is a dangerous way to run your professional life because it seeps into and contaminates your private life. Eventually, it led me to make some horrible choices in my personal behavior that I deeply regret and am embarrassed by—even ashamed of.
Ultimately, because failure had been personalized to such a degree, I was tormented by the very thought of errors of execution, mistakes, or loss. Winning, winning, winning—perfection—was the only sol
ution. Except it was no solution—even winning a Super Bowl couldn’t remove the knowledge that failure was in the future, because nobody wins all the time.
In part, I brought the situation on myself, because our team was so bad in the beginning that all of us, including the owner, Eddie DeBartolo Jr., were grateful for the slightest signs of improvement. Eddie did not come from a football background, so he left me totally alone, free to fail or succeed without interference. This changed when I achieved results.
When San Francisco won a Super Bowl championship, the owner’s involvement began to show itself in various ways, including a willingness to pay top money for talent. Eddie Jr. opened his pocketbook, and the 49ers went from the bottom of the spending charts to among those at the top.
Salaries were high, and the players (and their families) were given first-class treatment in travel and accommodations, including being flown to luxurious resorts for our Super Bowl ring ceremonies. When we needed him to write a check to acquire top talent from another team, Eddie didn’t bat an eye. He was the best in the NFL in that regard and was known to occasionally hand an envelope stuffed with cash to a player who had done well during a game.
That part of it was great. Unfortunately, it was accompanied by something else that became destructive. Increasingly, Eddie kept raising the bar. Soon enough, if his team didn’t win that year’s Super Bowl, he was distraught, enraged. Just getting to the play-offs each year was insufficient; in fact, it drove him crazy—it was unacceptable to him, perhaps because his pride was involved.
When we lost, he felt helpless, since I was the coach, the one in charge who was running the show, not him. At the same time he was loosening the purse strings, he was beginning his heavy-handed approach to micro-management, occasionally offering ideas to me, which was certainly his right. But then he began questioning my decisions, occasionally belittling them, wondering out loud to anyone who cared to listen whether there wasn’t a better way than what I did—whether he, perhaps, knew more about it than I did.
