Do you save face? Or try to win?
October 11th, 2007
I’m struck by how often people — starting with yours truly — do things that undermine their stated goals. We say we want X, but then we do all kinds of things that hamper or delay us from attaining it.
This is frequent in sports, where groupthink tends to leave many coaches beholden to the unwritten “book” of their profession. (Of course, this also leads to many debates over what “the book” says. E.g. is it permissible for a batter to bunt for a base hit in the ninth inning when the opposing pitcher is a couple of outs away from pitching a perfect game?)
New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick has done a great job during his tenure with the Pats at throwing out the book and doing what needs to be done to win. A fine example of this comes from a long blog post that Joe Posnanski did this week. Primarily it’s about the baseball playoffs (Joe is the baseball columnist for the Kansas City Star), but it makes a nice connection to Belichick’s work.
This is what drives me absolutely crazy about some coaches/managers — I like [Cleveland Indians manager Eric] Wedge just fine. But it seems like they forget that the whole point, especially in the playoffs, is to win. That’s all. It isn’t to make people happy. It isn’t to pay homage to tradition. It isn’t to make friends. Win. Sometimes I think Bill Belichick is the only guy who gets this. People say: What is it that makes Belichick so great? Is he smarter than everyone else? Does he work harder? Is he more ruthless? Is it because he spies on his former coaches? What?
I’ll tell you what I think it is: The guy plays to win. End of story. I remember a couple of years ago, the Pats were playing the Colts, and that’s when Peyton Manning had his record-breaking year. Now, you know all year, defensive coordinators were breaking down film, having late night meetings, losing sleep. And you KNOW that at some point, more than one of them said: “You know what we should do? We should just rush two linemen and drop back nine into coverage. The guy will never know what hit him.”
And then those coordinators laughed, shared that goofy idea with other coaches as a joke, had a little more coffee, and went back to some standard defense which Manning carved up.
So what did Belichick do? He thought, “Hey, you know what we should do? We should rush two linemen and drop back nine into coverage. The guy will never know what hit him.”
And then they DID it. Now, the strategy worked, but even if it didn’t work — so what? The point is he figured out what he honestly believed to be the best way to win, then he put that plan into motion. He didn’t run scared. As a fan, that’s all I want from my manager or coach. Do everything you can to win. If it doesn’t work, hey, losing is part of the deal.
Amen, sir.
So, what face-saving or by-the-book things do you do that undermine the attainment of your goals?