Bill Walsh

"“Your job is not civil service or even big corporate business. We exist to support and field a football team. In other words, we don’t ‘exist for the sake of existing.’ We are not maintaining.” He told me this addressed his concern that most people simply go through the motions at their jobs, just putting in time—existing—with a “business as usual” attitude. Not if you’re on his team."

"I would never write anything that suggests the path to success is a continuum of positive, even euphoric experiences—that if you do all the right things everything will work out. Frequently it doesn’t; often you crash and burn. This is part and parcel of pursuing and achieving very ambitious goals. It is also one of the profound lessons I have learned during my career, namely, that even when you have an organization brimming with talent, victory is not always under your control. Rather, it’s like quicksilver—fleeting and elusive, not something you can summon at will even under the best circumstances. Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called “failure.”"

"How to Know if You’re Doing the Job When I give a speech at a corporate event, I often ask those in attendance, “Do you know how to tell if you’re doing the job?” As heads start whispering back and forth, I provide these clues: “If you’re up at 3 A.M. every night talking into a tape recorder and writing notes on scraps of paper, have a knot in your stomach and a rash on your skin, are losing sleep and losing touch with your wife and kids, have no appetite or sense of humor, and feel that everything might turn out wrong, then you’re probably doing the job.” This always gets a laugh, but not a very big one. Those executives in the audience recognize there is a significant price to pay to be the best. That price is not something they laugh at."

"MY FIVE DOS FOR GETTING BACK INTO THE GAME: 1. Do expect defeat. It’s a given when the stakes are high and the competition is working ferociously to beat you. If you’re surprised when it happens, you’re dreaming; dreamers don’t last long. 2. Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional “train wreck” you have just been in. It’s mental quicksand. 3. Do allow yourself appropriate recovery—grieving—time. You’ve been knocked senseless; give yourself a little time to recuperate. A keyword here is “little.” Don’t let it drag on. 4. Do tell yourself, “I am going to stand and fight again,” with the knowledge that often when things are at their worst you’re closer than you can imagine to success. Our Super Bowl victory arrived less than sixteen months after my “train wreck” in Miami. 5. Do begin planning for your next serious encounter. The smallest steps—plans—move you forward on the road to recovery. Focus on the fix. MY FIVE DON’TS: 1. Don’t ask, “Why me?” 2. Don’t expect sympathy. 3. Don’t bellyache. 4. Don’t keep accepting condolences. 5. Don’t blame others."

"The competitor who won’t go away, who won’t stay down, has one of the most formidable competitive advantages of all. When the worst happens, as it did to me, I was helped by knowing what it took to be that kind of competitor—to not go away, to get up and fight back."

"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 visionary 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 Walsh loved lists, viewed them as a road map to results."

"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."

"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."

"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"

"Bill ran a pretty tight ship, but he knew when to let up. He didn’t beat up players mentally or physically in practice. In fact, his approach was unique because often we didn’t even wear pads in practice—there was no contact—especially as the season went on. Word got around the league, and other players wanted to be 49ers because Bill had this enlightened approach: He wanted us healthy on Sunday, so he didn’t work us to death on Wednesday like most other coaches. And that was just the start of his advanced way of thinking. Everything he did was well thought out and ahead of the curve."

"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."

"Bill raised everybody’s standard, what we defined as acceptable. Perfection was his acceptable norm, and he got us thinking we could achieve it by teaching us what perfection was and how to reach it—not just how to locate a receiver, but every other aspect of doing your job at the top level, whatever that job was in the organization. It was something special, teaching a person, a whole team, an entire organization, to want to be perfect, to want to get to the next level, and the next one. And then do it."

"The place you dreamed of but didn’t know you could reach? Bill Walsh taught me how to reach it. He taught all of us how to reach it."

"When confronted with a “problem”—for example, how do we score touchdowns without a good running game or a strong passer? what is our communication process on the sidelines during a game when crowd noise becomes overwhelming? what are the specific duties of my executive vice president for football operations? and hundreds and hundreds more—Bill Walsh dissected the issue into its relevant parts, found a solution, and then taught the solution to the appropriate individuals. His creative and commonsense brilliance as a problem solver was unsurpassed and a major component in the installation of what he called the Standard of Performance."

"“But here’s the lesson I learned.” And he told me the lesson. Bill talked about his final game as an assistant coach with the Bengals, when he became flummoxed in the last moments of a game against the Oakland Raiders: “But here’s the lesson I learned.” All those lessons, all that accumulating leadership expertise."

"The ability to help the people around me self-actualize their goals underlines the single aspect of my abilities and the label that I value most—teacher. —BILL WALSH"

"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…"

"He did not view the organization and the individuals within it as two separate entities, but as one and the same: “People are the heart of your organization,” he instructed me. This perspective affected his leadership profoundly."

"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."

"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 talked about winning his first Super Bowl and how it destroyed the next season:"

"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."

"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."