Everyone tuck your shirt in
Raising an organization's self respect
I’m listening to The Score Takes Care of Itself, the leadership book by the legendary San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh. What I find most compelling is his focus on setting small rules to create a high “standard of performance.” He did this for the entire organization, from players and coaches to scouts and salespeople. For example, he made sure that players wore their jerseys tucked in at all times, and that everyone answered the phone with the same professional response.
He inherited a terrible football team (their record was 2-12 the year before he joined), and he credits his standard of performance for raising the organization’s collective self respect and turning the franchise into a dynasty.
This type of thinking is very appealing because it is so quickly actionable. It seems very difficult to design a revolutionary new style of offense like Walsh did, but it does not seem hard to implement small, tactical rules to help people raise their level of performance. It seems like making these small changes is a good first step which enables large progress.
My high school soccer coach used similar techniques and I was struck by how well it worked. We all wore the same shirts to practice, we tucked them in, we were not allowed to swear. And this discipline made us much more cohesive and focused.
This works on the individual level too — the great biographer Robert Caro puts on a suit every morning before he writes alone all day, to remind himself that he has a job to do. I’m writing this in sweatpants from my couch but I would probably do well to be a little more like Caro.
The power of uniforms (and other rituals) is underappreciated. People want to belong to something, and the uniform helps with that. Another gem from Bill Walsh was the "40 plays" idea. When the Niners were going into their first Superbowl Walsh was concerned that his players would be star struck and play below their potential. To counter this he defined the first 40 offensive plays that they were going to run, no matter what. The Niners practiced those 40 plays leading up to the Super Bowl, and guess what, they won. The players weren't worried about the Super Bowl. They focused on executing their 40 plays and "the score took care of itself."