Wisdom

Making the Jump from Good to Great

Excerpts taken from Good to Great by Jim Collins

Have you ever wondered how some teams can get to four Super Bowls and not win a single one while others are 6-0?  The answer lies in the age old question; how do we get from good (making four super bowls) to great (winning 6 super bowls).  The Buffalo Bills had to have some good teams to win the AFC 4 times during the 1990’s, likewise the Atlanta Braves of the same era were good but not great teams.  They won 14 straight division titles but have only one World Series Championship to show for it.  Meanwhile the Yankees have won 26 World Series Championships, the Forty Niners are 5-0 in Super Bowls, this year’s Super Bowl winner the Steelers are 6-0 in Super Bowls.   What differentiates the Braves and Bills from the Yankees, Niners, and Steelers?

In his book, Good to Great—Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t, Jim Collins states that, “Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.” He goes on to give examples by writing, “We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good—and that is their main problem.” These comments are easily applied to the aforesaid sports franchises; in fact not only are Collins’ comments applicable they illuminate why some teams never get past being good and become great.  The Bills best chance to win the Super Bowl was their first one where they lost on a missed field goal as time expired, Atlanta’s only World Series win came in their 3^rd World Series appearance.  For these teams Collins’ seems to say that being good (making the Super Bowl/World Series) was enough?

Collins proposes the question, “Is the disease of ‘just being good’ curable?” If so, how? If you are like most, being good is enough and you will likely find the following information and insights too challenging to your norm. If, however, your desire is to see your team progress to greatness the following insights might prove helpful if applied. What do the ‘good-to-great companies’ share in common that distinguish them from the ‘good’ companies?  What is it that these companies are not doing, along with what they are doing, that propels them into a class of their own? How can we take the findings in Collin’s book and apply them to our teams?

Let’s take a look first at some of the key findings mentioned in Good to Great.

#1-Great companies do not bring in a hot shot new CEO but rather use a CEO trained, groomed and raised from within the company

Perhaps college and high school programs understand this best by nature of the rules and limitations of the NCAA and NAIA. High school and college programs start with a group of talented and often recruited athletes. Once in the system, it is the philosophy of the program and the strength of the coaching staff that determines success.  True, sometimes a school will try to find a better CEO (coach) in hopes of making the program great but more often than not, it is the program with consistency of staff and belief that will succeed. Also, college and high school programs have to rely on their ability to train athletes since rules prevent the best players from switching schools without great difficulty or losing a year of eligibility. Professional and youth club sports are more likely to disagree and experience a higher level of “hot shot CEO” syndrome. They are constantly trying to recruit athletes with promises of fame, fortune, success and/or glory. Without rules limiting what one club can offer a player from another club to switch, we see 14, 15-16 year old athletes subjected to the success-hungry adult. Professional teams are constantly trying to wheel and deal to get the best talent because success is money. What would happen if teams put as much energy into training and developing the talent they have and building loyalty and integrity and character into their “staff” (players) as they did in trying to bring in the next best thing? Could they progress from good to great as a program and not just have a great year or two?  At City Beach we use a specific method of training and emphasize that the coaches and their teachings are our biggest asset.  In accordance with that philosophy City Beach spends a lot of time training our coaches, we host a clinic each fall/winter for our coaches to improve their craft. We have a reading list designed to challenge our way of thinking and stretch our imaginations when it comes to our teams.  Most importantly, City Beach believes in promoting from within; City Beach pushes their coaches to be better, challenges them to make the jump from good to great by rewarding loyalty and results.  In short City Beach embodies the principle that Collins is preaching, you’re only as good as the people working for you.  One need to look no further than the New England Patriots and their incredible success in the free agency era to see that the stability in the front office and trust in the coaches and evaluators has made them the model NFL franchise.  The GM has an evaluating staff that has found a Super Bowl MVP in the 6^th round of the draft and even took a quarterback who had not started a game since high school and managed to go 11-5 with him at the helm.  The coaches trust that their system and their training methods will result in success.  Much like the Oakland A’s did in their MoneyBall heyday; the Patriots have redefined the paradigm for success.

#2-Transformation is broken down into three stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action. 

Disciplined people are leaders that are “a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.” And about having the right people in the right positions…sound familiar? He even suggests that getting rid of the wrong people is a key in disciplined people. Ambition in each individual needs to be first and foremost for the institution, not for themselves. Coaches and business leaders all over are trying to avoid “The presence of gargantuan personal ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.”  How many teams try to ride on the coat-tails of the nation’s best player only to find they come up short of winning the championship?  Remember Michael Jordan did not win his first championship until his scoring went down and he relied on his teammates to help carry the load.  Who are these teams with the best-of-the-best losing to? They are losing to the great teams that have focused on having the right players, not always the best players. Think back to the movie Miracle?  During the movie Herb Brooks (as played by Kurt Russell) after being named the coach of the Olympic Hockey team attends a tryout put on by USA hockey.  He has already identified who he wants on the team and turns in his list about 20 minutes into the tryout.  After looking over the names the head of USA Hockey tells Brooks that he left many of the best players off the team.  Brooks responds with “I am not looking for the best players, I am looking for the right ones.”  How many times have we seen coaches fall in love with athletic ability and not look at the intangibles.  Most coaches recruit off of numbers, how tall is the player, what does she touch.  This is illustrated at the NFL Combine in a way that makes it crystal clear to anyone willing to look beyond the numbers.  Every year you have a combine phenomenon that shatters record in the 40 yard dash or lifts an unprecedented amount of weight and so on.  These players are then drafted way above where they were projected; most however do not make it in the NFL because they lack the intangibles.  We are in no way suggesting that a team of mediocre talent with great teamwork will always beat the selfish all-star team but one need only remember the Olympic Men’s Basketball team pre-2008 to see that it certainly can and does happen. 

In the disciplined thought stage, Collin’s writes “To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. Just because something is your core business-just because you have been doing it for years or perhaps even decades- does not necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it.”  The world of athletics is constantly changing. Rules change, philosophies change, caliber of athletes change, biomechanical understanding and training changes, etc. A good coach will do a good job regardless of change because they know how to fit the people into their system. Having done that, the teams they coach will be good. Consider the possibility that a great coach will change with their sport, continually seeking to be cutting edge without affecting their core philosophy, therefore producing great teams time after time. Good-to-great companies continually refine path to greatness with brutal facts of reality. Good to great teams must do the same thing. If the brutal reality is that what you “have always done” is not working, how comfortable are you with change? How comfortable are your players with change?  Here at City Beach we believe in an adherence to principles (core values as Collins’ calls them) combined with a willingness to change everything and anything except those principles.  The key to making such a philosophy work is the distinction between principles (which will never change) and how we do things (which is always changing).  Case in point Tiger Woods retooled his entire golf swing after winning not one but a number of major championships.   

Disciplined action is having a culture of discipline. “When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls.” One of the things most coaches point to as an indicator of success is team chemistry; if all players on the team are working towards the same common goal and giving it their best effort every time team chemistry is moot.  It is important to note that in order for team chemistry to be strongest teams need to have disciplined players.   Another point Collins makes is to start a “stop doing” list. “Most of us lead busy but undisciplined lives. We have ever-expanding “to do” lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing doing,,,,,-and doing more. And it rarely works.  Those who built good to great companies, however, made as much use of “stop doing” lists…they displayed a remarkable discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.” Wow! Certainly many coaches out there feel challenged by the notion of no hierarchy, no controls, no bureaucracy. How do we keep our players and staff in line? How do we narrow the focus enough to give everyone the same vision? How do we know who is a disciplined person and who is not? Furthermore, how do we become more disciplined leaders of our companies? City Beach has created an environment where disciplined people have the freedom to be successful.  The common misconception is that when you coach at City Beach you have to follow a lot of rules, you have to write your practice out on the whiteboard, you have to do things the same way everyone else does.  While some of those ideas are true, we want coaches to write their practice plan out, we want coaches teaching the correct techniques; the idea behind these things are that we are providing coaches the needed foundations that allow them to go out there and coach.  These foundations are to the educations benefit to the player and make out practices much more effective.

Perhaps you had never thought of creating a “stop doing” list. If you were to begin a “stop doing” list what would be on it? What is the “extraneous junk” that is keeping your team good while preventing them from becoming great? Some of the things on City Beach’s “stop doing list are; stretching in a circle, coaches tossing balls to the setter during hitting lines, traditional back and forth pepper.  Instead we use a more dynamic stretch firing muscles that are used in volleyball movements, we have our hitter pass a ball to the setter and transition to hit, and we try to do three person pepper or ball control pepper where the digger digs the ball straight up then sets herself before hitting back to her partner.

So what, then, do great players have in common? Surely as coaches our lists would have some commonalities-they get plenty of rest, they work out in the off-season, they eat right, they are “coachable”, they make their teams better, they practice hard. We suggest they also do all the little things knowing there is no such thing as a little thing. This is reflected: in their mindfulness and intent in every contact of every ball during practice; in their leadership, be it with vocal inspiration or by quiet example, to always take the team in a direction it needs to go; in their willingness to humble themselves and do tedious tasks usually relegated to lesser players; in their diligent goal-setting and pursuit of achievement; in having a vision for their own personal greatness as it fits into the greatness of their team.  City Beach makes sure that players and coaches understand that excellence is achieved through a mastery of the fundamentals; excellence is in fact quite tedious and not very glamorous at all.  Like Aristotle said many years ago; “We are defined by what we repeatedly do, excellence therefore is not an act but a habit.”

What do great coaches achieve that good coaches may not pursue? A season plan as opposed to just a practice plan, a vision as opposed to just a goal, relentless pursuit of an expectation of excellence that is clearly and consistently communicated to their players; these are some of the things that separate a good program from a great one a good coach from a great coach. They help their players expand their focus on things that are critical to their programs success as well as their own. A good coach has a style that works over time and can recruit and train personnel to execute that style, a great coach can adapt system and style to fit current personnel if need be.  In coaching as in life, those that adapt are the most successful. 

Finally, what do great teams manage that good team mismanage?   Some of the things that great teams take care to manage are egos, commitment to the team and team goals, trust in each other and coaches, accountability, attention to detail.  Managing these attributes is not easy and in fact most coaches would rather not manage them at all (maybe that’s why they are stuck on good).  

Teams and companies are similar in design. The purpose in writing this article is to provoke discussion, to challenge the norms and to encourage coaches to consider how they might take their teams from good-to-great. If “execution is the missing link between aspirations and results” (Bossidy, Charan, Burck) what then can your players and team execute that will make them great and as their leader, what more can you do to get them there?

Prepared by - Manny Johnson

Thanks Manny GO BEACH! CBOD!