Found myself thumbing through a book by Bill Walsh called “The Score Takes Care of Itself.” There are many sports leader books out there, I thought this one was cool because it was the first that really focused on a leadership philosophy. He was a person very focused on the process of improvement, the culture of discipline and precision rather than a culture of winning. I think the main point is that if you focus on the right things, the process, then the winning part will just happen as a natural outcome.
That is really easy to forget. It was nice today to spend sometime with Mr. Walsh and get a remembrance of this important concept. I have sometimes got myself so twisted by the thought of the outcome that I forget that solid principles and a foundation of core behavior are what cause result. It is not enough just to want an outcome, you have to live like you deserve the outcome first.
One of the quotes from his book, “I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving — obsessing, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude. I knew if I did that, winning would take care of itself.”
He had a core philosophy to treat people well, believing in their potential, and to convince everyone in his organization that they could be great. He seemed to adopt the philosophy that you identify principles that you believe in and then you follow them be word and deed.
In my personal life, I think I need to learn to be more passionate about the process of improving everyday then to worry about the outcomes. Instead of stressing about where I want to be, perhaps I should just think about how I can improve my approach each day.
Guy Reams
