The Score Takes Care of Itself (23 page)

It dawned on me that San Francisco was Siberia in the eyes of knowledgeable executives and managers in the NFL. They viewed our dire situation as hopeless, worse than a new expansion team starting from scratch, simply unfixable in the foreseeable future. (I even offered George Young more money than he was making in Miami to come out west and run things for the 49ers.) We were getting nowhere.

Things took a new direction during a breakfast meeting with Eddie DeBartolo and his trusted aide, Carmen Policy. Out of the blue, Eddie suggested that since the turndowns were piling up we stop looking and that
I
take the job—be head coach as well as general manager. It was a somewhat unwelcome suggestion, because I felt my hands were full already. But it very quickly made sense: I’d be the one hiring
my
staff—the people who would decide
my
future and the future of
my
organization. I was disappointed that I hadn’t come up with the idea myself.

I proceeded expeditiously to sign up proven talent—coaches and administrators, my staff—who were both attuned to my philosophy and compatible with my personality. After being turned down by everyone, I was suddenly hearing yes, yes, yes. Why? Simple. I offered jobs to outstanding people I had previously worked with or worked for or knew very well—the cream of the crop from a list of former associates in my contact book going back all the way, in one case, to my days as an amateur boxer. They knew and believed in me as much as I knew and believed in them. A general manager from the outside would not have been able to do this—more likely, he would have been hiring people from his own contact book, imposing his associates on me. It might have worked, but it would have been a long shot.

Each of these talented men accepted my job offer and came to San Francisco as a known and compatible quantity. There was mutual respect and understanding, and often a proven record of being able to work together. They hit the ground running, and two of them, Denny Green and Norb Hecker, didn’t have far to run. Both were just a few miles down the freeway from the 49ers headquarters at 711 Nevada Street in Redwood City, California. They began work immediately. (Another, George Seifert, an outstanding defensive coordinator when we worked together at Stanford, joined us in my second season with the 49ers.)

Thus, from early in my tenure at San Francisco, I was surrounded and supported by staff who didn’t have to learn about me or my system. And vice versa.

It was a transforming experience; in the course of a few weeks I’d gone from casting about for a general manager who would come in with a steep learning curve about me—how and why I did things—to putting together a really excellent staff that was soon in sync.

As a result, there were no bad mis-hires and we were able to proceed right from the start almost as if we’d been working together successfully for years. And in a way, there was some truth to it. This, in large part, explains what some viewed as an inexplicable turnaround by San Francisco—from NFL doormats to the NFL’s dominant team, champions—in so short a time. We had a first-rate, compatible staff in sync right from the start.

Nevertheless, even in a situation as ideal as this, you must expect differences in performance levels among staff members and recognize the necessity of getting and keeping them on the same page—
your
page—in their new environment.

Here are two short lists I created that address what I deem as essential traits in a staff member and the way I went about keeping them on the same page of their new book—the book called “The San Francisco 49ers: Bill Walsh, Head Coach, General Manager, Boss.”

My checklist of personal qualities—assets—in potential staff members:

My checklist for keeping good staff members on the same page:

More people are more familiar with losing than with winning. Consequently, losing is not that difficult to deal with, in the sense that we’ve all faced it, lived it, and are familiar with the fallout it can produce. We have seen people lose heart, self-destruct, turn on one another, and become disloyal. We know the whole syndrome of losing, but leaders often don’t think very much about the other side of the coin—winning; especially winning big.

As with losing, there is fallout from success, and many of the symptoms are the same. The only difference is that you go down with a smile on your face instead of a frown.

Our first Super Bowl championship team had forty-five dedicated and disciplined players on the roster. Soon afterward, and to varying degrees, eight of them self-destructed and ended their careers too early by mishandling their lives through drugs and alcohol, stupid lifestyles, and becoming consumed with themselves. A couple of them still can’t cope with life. Many other good players and people on that team were also thrown off stride to varying degrees. Why? Because they
won
the Super Bowl; we were the world champions of football.

This response—being knocked off balance emotionally and mentally—is one of the fundamental reasons it is so difficult to continue winning; it’s true in business as in sports. Repeat winners at the high end of competition are rare, because when success of any magnitude occurs, there is a dis orienting change that we are unprepared for. I, too, was somewhat thrown off by our first Super Bowl victory. Having navigated through long losing streaks and losing seasons, having climbed to the top and led a team at the bottom of the barrel to a world championship, I had little knowledge of the new terrain.

How else can you explain that in the season immediately following that championship—Super Bowl XVI—and with virtually the same personnel, we lost twice as many games as we won in that strike-shortened season? The explanation is, in part, quite simple: Success Disease.

The second-richest man in America, Warren Buffett, says one of his biggest challenges is to help his top people—all wealthy beyond belief—stay interested enough to jump out of bed in the morning and work with all the enthusiasm they did when they were poor and just getting started.

Buffett is addressing that difficult situation of trying to motivate yourself or your team when you’ve become a winner. Success Disease—overconfidence is a major symptom—can happen in any profession and can be as difficult to remedy as underconfidence. Over- and underconfidence are an ongoing challenge in leadership.

When you reach a large goal or finally get to the top, the distractions and new assumptions can be dizzying. First comes heightened confidence, followed quickly by overconfidence, arrogance, and a sense that “we’ve mastered it; we’ve figured it out; we’re golden.” But the gold can tarnish quickly. Mastery requires
endless
remastery. In fact, I don’t believe there is ever true mastery. It is a process, not a destination. That’s what few winners realize and explains to some degree why repeating is so difficult. Having triumphed, winners come to believe that the process of mastery is concluded and that they are its proud new owners.

Success Disease makes people begin to forego to different degrees the effort, focus, discipline, teaching, teamwork, learning, and attention to detail that brought “mastery” and its progeny, success. The hunger is diminished, even removed in some people.

“Complacency” may be too strong a word to describe it, maybe not. Perhaps “contentment” describes it. You feel content after navigating up the hard and treacherous road to victory. This is understandable; you should feel satisfaction and contentment. But when it lingers—sets in—you and your team are suffering from Success Disease. It can create a lack of respect for the competition, a feeling of superiority, and an assumption that you can win at will, turn it on when it counts. The time to turn it on (and leave it on) is before it counts. In fact, my belief is that it counts
all
the time.

And, of course, when you couple contentment with underestimating the competition, you—all by yourself—have set yourself up for defeat. Imagine that.

There are specific actions I took based on the lessons learned after the 49ers’ experience with Success Disease following our first Super Bowl championship. They are very effective, although there is no guarantee that in following them you will fend off the fallout from achievement; specifically, Success Disease: