by Bill Walsh
All of this bothered my father a great deal. Regardless of what he did, it seemed the powers that be would not accord him equal status, would not recognize the legitimacy of his approach and his leadership skills. Thus, he increasingly became driven by a simple but almost obsessive goal: to prove them all wrong. And he did.
This feeling of being discriminated against was part of the reason he created the Minority Coaches Fellowship Program while he was at San Francisco. He knew that smart, skilled black college coaches were not even being considered for head coaching jobs in the NFL because of race. He understood their plight because of his own experience of being kept at arm’s length when it came to a head coaching position. He hated it and was the first head coach in the NFL to establish a formal program to address the problem by inviting talented minority coaches to observe how he did things at San Francisco. He showed them what they needed to know to operate successfully at the top level. Later, the league followed his lead with a fellowship program that expanded on what he had done.
In Super Bowl XLI, the Chicago Bears faced the Indianapolis Colts. Lovie Smith was head coach of the Bears; Tony Dungy was head coach of the Colts. Both are black. Dad enjoyed seeing those two great coaches running the show. (In fact, Tony had played briefly for Dad as a 49er.) In 2009, two years later, the Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl XLIII. Their young coach was Mike Tomlin. By now, the fact that a black head coach was in the Super Bowl wasn’t even a big deal. Times had changed so much. My father didn’t live long enough to see that game, but somewhere, he had to be smiling.
You might think all assistant coaches in the NFL have the same level of desire to become a head coach that Bill Walsh had, but the magnitude of his aspiration is impossible to overstate. He was a perfectionist, and he saw perfection as being most likely achieved only if his ideas and decisions weren’t filtered through and inevitably—in his opinion—misconstrued and misapplied by others. He had to be the one in charge.
Oddly enough, he came to this conclusion as head coach at a little high school near San Francisco in Fremont, California, during his first two years of coaching—the Washington High Huskies. In short order, he turned a perpetual loser into a big winner. My father saw what happened when he did everything himself (including driving the team bus to away games). As you’ve read in his own words, this desire to “do it all myself ” eventually became an Achilles’ heel for him.
From high school coaching he moved up by moving down: “up” to the college and NFL level, “down” as an assistant coach (i.e., secondary) position.
Subsequently, he often saw his well-thought-out and often unconventional ideas ignored, modified, or, on occasion, screwed up by others above him. This drove him to distraction and created a smoldering desire to be in charge of everything once again—just as he was at Washington High School. Now, however, he wanted to do it at the highest level of football, where the quality of talent offered him the possibility of achieving perfection: the NFL.
There were lots of guys in the motor pool of assistant coaches around the league, but not many developed Dad’s all-consuming passion to run the show. It finally paid off when, after many years of working for and learning from Paul Brown at Cincinnati, one of the NFL’s acknowledged great minds, Dad was put in charge of virtually everything by Eddie DeBartolo, San Francisco’s young owner, the man who must be given all the credit for seeing something special in Bill Walsh.
Eddie was too young—thirty years old—to be part of the NFL’s good-old-boy network (the DeBartolo family had only recently purchased the San Francisco 49ers) and thus wasn’t concerned about Dad’s lack of “pedigree” or put off by the intellectual disposition of his new head coach—he liked it, in fact. Eddie was rewarded for both his perspective and his perceptive choice: Three years later, his team achieved one of the greatest turnarounds in sports history when San Francisco went from worst to best and won a Super Bowl.
Bill Walsh loved military history, including the Civil War. He had read all of the books he could find about it, and when Dad took the family to Gettysburg one year, he conducted a tour of the battlefield for us that was detailed to such a degree a paid tour guide could have learned something. He used his knowledge of military history to motivate teams and often invoked battles when, against all odds, the troops—i.e., his team—had overcome the enemy.
He was a PhD-level motivator with a powerful ability to get people’s attention and point them in the right direction. Military analogies were useful occasionally, but he had a full bag of other options. Some are amusing. As head coach of the San Jose Apaches, a group of cast-offs and wan nabes who all felt they deserved to be playing at a higher level (specifically, the NFL), Dad made the following statement in his first meeting with the team: “Fellas, I want you to think about something: There’s a reason you’re all in this room today.” He paused as his implied message—“Nobody out there thinks you’re any good”—sank in. Then he continued with a solemn warning: “This is your last chance to prove you don’t belong here.”
And regardless of the approach he used, Bill Walsh would not degrade individuals. While he was very careful in handing out compliments (that is, he was a master of withholding praise), he constantly focused attention on the next level of commitment and sacrifice and performance. One of his tactics occurred during the team meeting the night before a game. He didn’t give a big rah-rah speech but incited players with his own method: One by one, selectively, he called players out for commitment: “Keith Fahnhorst, if I call 90-O tomorrow, can we count on you to hold your block?” Fahnhorst was a tackle; 90-O was a play that needed him to block. “Can you promise you’ll knock somebody on his ass if I call 90-O, Keith?”
He’d go through the roster like that: “Ray [Wersching, 49ers field-goal specialist], how long can we count on you for tomorrow? Can you deliver forty-seven yards at the end of the game if we need it? Don’t say yes unless you’re sure. I need to know absolutely I can count on you, Ray. Can I?” On and on, commitments, publicly to their team, of high performance in the coming battle.
He was also frank about admitting his own mistakes. After a game, at the next meeting, he would review what had gone right and wrong with the whole team. While he didn’t pull any punches when reviewing their individual performances, he was also forthright when it came to his own work. He would tell them where he had made mistakes: “I should have done this instead of what I called,” he’d say. There was no culture of seeking scapegoats, no failure and finger pointing. It was very matter-of-fact: We did this wrong; here’s how we do it right. He would critique himself equally hard in winning and losing, always leaving room for improvement. Improvement was his obsession—always looking for ways to improve his coaching, his team, his organization.
Twelve O’Clock High, starring Gregory Peck, was one of his favorite movies and inspired him a great deal. Eventually, after his retirement, he described to me the similarity he felt between General Frank Savage (Peck’s character in the movie) and his own situation and trajectory at San Francisco.
The film is about an American bomber group in England during World War II that is suffering extreme problems. Leadership is poor; casualties are high; morale is low; their luck is bad. General Savage comes in and, against long odds, turns the bomber group around, installing discipline, high performance, and good morale while leading raid after successful raid over Germany. But the personal toll is high as he sees friends killed and good men destroyed in various ways in combat.
The raids continue day after day, until one morning, as the crews of the bomber group—the 918th Flying Fortresses—are climbing into their planes for another attack, Savage finds that he is unable to lift himself into his B-17 bomber to lead them into battle. Having led his fliers to victory, he is emotionally gutted—a basket case who is taken to a hospital ward to recover.
Substitute the San Francisco 49ers for the 918th Bomber Group, football players for flight crews, Coach Bill Walsh for General Frank Savage, retirement fo
r the hospital ward, and you get the idea. My father loved that movie because it told the story of what he did in football, and what happened to him as a result, in the context of something he loved—the military.
It is in the framework of this dichotomy, extreme success as a leader in the NFL and extreme distress as a person, that makes Dad’s story so compelling, his lessons in leadership so valuable. His staggering drive to prevail—to “prove them all wrong”—his ferocious competitive instinct, and his singular brilliance as a strategist, organizer, and team builder produced historic results. The blueprint for his kind of leadership is revealed in this book.
The lessons he shares in The Score Takes Care of Itself are both a beacon for leadership and a cautionary tale—what to do and what not to do. But isn’t that the subject all effective leaders dwell on? Isn’t it the perpetual puzzle of their leadership?
My father was a complex man, but he had a simple goal. Although the price was high, he achieved his goal, and as the years rolled by following his retirement, he gained peace and pride, great satisfaction and contentment, within himself. No longer an outsider in his mind, he saw that his philosophy and methodology were held in the highest esteem; his radical system the norm; his approach to team building commonplace. And that many considered him the greatest football coach of all time. At the end, he was lecturing about his ideas on leadership for graduate students at Stanford University.
I’ve told people that my father didn’t need a traditional family; his real family was football. And it was almost true. His commitment to the team, his organization, and its goals was total. Bill Walsh may not have sold his soul to the company store, but he leased it to the game he loved for many years.
My sister and I were there with my father on his final day. He was so weak, but still so strong in spirit. I whispered in his ear that it was okay to go, that the time had come and we loved him. Dad closed his eyes and was gone. He was brave as hell. I put my arms around him and my sister, Elizabeth, and I wept. His triumphs had been recognized for many years. He knew he was no longer an outsider.
My father is gone, but his hard-earned leadership lessons remain in place, perhaps more relevant now than ever before. I know he would hope that something in his own experience, as shared in this book, is of value in your own challenges as a leader. It would mean that once again he was able to do what he loved doing and did so well: teach others how to be as great as they can be.
Index
accountability
choice of employees
as leadership trait
as Standard of Performance
actions
documentation of
norms and expectations for
adversity, opportunity in
Allen, George
Anderson, Ken
anxiety. See stress
Ashe, Arthur
attitudes
commitment to perfection
contagious nature of
dignity in defeat
fear of failure
influence of interior leaders on
mentoring of
norms for
one-point-underdog mentality
overconfidence
positivity
situational
supportiveness
work ethic
See also egotism; mental state
Audick, Dan
Ayers, John
behavior
effect of success or failure on
expectations for
hard work
leadership by example
mental state and
belief
confidence in employees
organizational self-image
in self
beliefs
leadership philosophy
philosophy of staff members
strength of, in decision making
teaching of
Benjamin, Guy
betrayal
by staff
by superiors
violation of Standard of Performance
See also loyalty
blind side, protection of
Board, Dwaine
bonding
benefits of
in celebration of success
connection and extension
Bronzan, Bob
Brown, Paul
directness in communication
expertise of
openness to change
organization and management skills
reluctance to share credit
sabotage of Walsh’s career
understanding of organizational accountability
Bryant, Bear
Buffett, Warren
burnout
Carter, Virgil
character
as basis for leadership
of employees
situational
Clark, Dwight
Clark, Monte
Clayton, Mark
Coca-Cola
Cochems, Eddie
collaboration
communication
acceptance of input
after conflict
to avoid isolation
with creative employees
directness and clarity
for effective collaboration
employee’s skill at
of expectations
within organization
practice of
skills for
with superiors
teaching
competitors
demonization of
response to threat from
rumors about
composure
in defeat
as leadership trait
performance under pressure
rituals for
in zone for optimal performance
connection and extension
contingency planning. See planning
conventional wisdom
Cook, Greg
Cooper, Earl
Cosell, Howard
Coslet, Bruce
Craig, Roger
credit, sharing of
crisis-management team
criticism, acceptance of
Cross, Randy
culture of organization. See organizational culture; Standard of Performance
Curtis, Isaac
Dahlen, Neal
Davis, Al
Days of Grace (Ashe)
Dean, Fred
DeBartolo, Eddie
concern for others
purchase of 49ers
recognition of Walsh’s potential
DeBartolo, Eddie, Jr.
DeBerg, Steve
decision making
after success
collaboration and interaction for
under pressure
defeat
adherence to failing strategy
attitude toward
with dignity
fear of failure
meaningful facts in
as part of success
recovery from
shared ownership of
transformation of behavior by
delegation of responsibility
demonization of competition
detail
attention to, as leadership trait
as basis for discipline
in clarification of expectations
in communication with superiors
contingency planning
focus on trivial issues
in pursuit of excellence
scripting
in Standard of Performance
Dils, Steve
distractions
in environment
hostile relationships
negativity
overconfidence
rituals to avoid
rumors
trivialities
Ditka, Mike
Drive (offensive series of plays)
Drucker, Peter
Dung
y, Tony
Duper, Mark
egotism
in adherence to failing strategy
versus ego
of employee
exploitation of
as impediment to communication
injury to group unity
limitation of collaboration
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
emotional state. See mental state
employees
character
delegation of responsibility to
desirable qualities
direct interaction with
firing of, for Standard of Performance violation
firing of underperformers
friendship with
harsh and decisive treatment toward
inner voices
mentoring by
personal goals
philosophy of
positive comments about
respect and concern for
responsibility for selection of
enemies
environment
for bonding
collaborative
communicative
creative
distractions in
positive and supportive
professional
range of moods in
ethics, organizational
example, leadership by
excellence, commitment to
expectations
belief and confidence in people
burnout from, to avoid
communication of
expectations (cont.)
escalation of
inflexibility concerning standards
maintenance of, after success
Standard of Performance
expertise
for effective teaching
of employees
mastery as process
of mentors
failure
adherence to failing strategy
attitude toward
defeat with dignity
fear of
meaningful facts in
as part of success
recovery from
shared ownership of
