WHARTON LEADERSHIP DIGEST
October, 2007, Volume 11, Number 12
LEARNING FROM COACH WOODEN: “You only have the ball for four minutes”
By Paul Asel
Born on a hardscrabble Indiana farm that lacked running water and electricity, John Wooden has achieved a level of excellence in his lifetime that few can rival. A 2003 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Wooden was the first person elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and coach. The coach, teacher and father of two led the basketball team at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to an unprecedented 10 college championships in 12 years, and 88 consecutive wins over two-plus seasons. Wooden remains revered and widely emulated in the three decades since he retired from coaching in 1974.
Wooden practiced his trade on a public stage where performance is readily measured in wins and losses. Wooden knows something about traditional measures of success, yet he advocated what he believed to be a higher standard: a level of intensity, execution and consistency that maximized a team’s potential. His 2005 book, Wooden on Leadership, presents the principles and practices he relied on to produce these landmark results.
History enshrines great leaders with an aura of inevitability. They seem to rise above the din of daily events to accept the mantle of greatness. At first glance, Wooden is no exception; he and his teams performed smoothly, almost effortlessly, as they progressed through the collegiate tournaments year after year. Yet UCLA’s success was the result of a long, intensive effort to build a high-performance team; Wooden coached for 32 years before UCLA won its first NCAA basketball championship. As Wooden noted, good things take time, sometimes a lot of time.
Wooden displayed remarkable attention to detail, focusing on the process rather than the prize. Preaching the four Ps of successful execution — planning, preparation, practice and performance — he believed in the gradual accumulation of many small things done at a very high standard. Wooden began each season by teaching his players the proper way to put on their socks (to reduce the likelihood of blisters) and sneakers (to augment agility and quickness) and progressed from there. As Gary Cunningham, a UCLA player and assistant coach under Wooden, noted: “He always used the laws of learning: explanation, demonstration, imitation and repetition. Lots of repetition. You can’t believe the repetition.”
Wooden believed that winning was a result of process, and he was a master of that process. Using the principle that “time is finite, its potential, infinite,” he managed every minute of the season. Wooden calculated that he had 210 hours each season — 105 practices, 2 hours each — to help his team achieve “competitive greatness.” He divided each practice into three-to-five minute increments and kept a log of each practice with his comments in an annual notebook. Using this log, he could compare the progress of his team for each practice session with each of his teams in prior years and continually upgrade and improve his practices and coaching methods from year to year.
As its basketball program gained national prominence, UCLA attracted ever-more talented players. Swen Nater, a future pro-basketball all-star, was a reserve center behind Bill Walton throughout his college career. Yet Wooden taught the value of teamwork above all else, saying “the strength of the pack is the wolf and strength of the wolf is the pack.”
Wooden devised every drill to encourage teamwork and, despite a penchant for clock management, yielded on efficiency when it reinforced teamwork. He sought a meaningful relationship with each person associated with the team and instilled a team spirit based on an “eagerness to sacrifice personal interest for the welfare of all.” Wooden never selected a team Most Valuable Player, but rather devised awards that recognized hustle, team spirit, and self improvement. Future Hall-of-Famer Gail Goodrich recalls Wooden asking: “You will have the basketball for approximately four minutes per game. What are you going to do for the team those other 36 minutes when you do not have the ball?”
Wooden recruited for character as much as for skill. In one case, he passed on a highly touted prospect because the player was rude to his mother. He encouraged debate — “When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking” — but did not tolerate non-compliance. “When a decision is made, it must be accepted by those on your team, or they must be encouraged to find another team,” he said. In the midst of the hippie-era 1970s, for example, star player Bill Walton told Wooden he intended to keep his long hair in violation of Wooden’s clean-cut policy. Wooden responded simply, “Bill, we will miss you.” Bill cut his hair that day.
Wooden was a man of principle, and his principles are embedded in his well-known Pyramid of Success. Wooden presented this pyramid, with its fifteen character traits, the cornerstones of which were effort and enthusiasm, to his team at the outset of each season, included it in the player’s handbook and prominently displayed it in his office. Wooden’s pyramid has now used not only by sports teams but also by businesses and religious organizations. When players reflect on the impact Wooden has had on them, it is the pyramid of success to which they most often refer.
One recurring theme in Wooden’s 2005 book, which is not directly reflected in the pyramid of success, is the need for balance. He writes, “Balance is crucial in everything we do,” and, “Like a man walking on ice, balance is more difficult to regain once it starts to slip away.” Indeed, balance is an undervalued principle in business. Entrepreneurship, like high altitude climbing, requires balance: climb too fast or too slow and you put yourself at risk. As David Packard, founder of Hewlett Packard, once observed, “More companies die of indigestion than starvation.” Companies would do well to focus more explicitly on the interplay among pacing, productivity and performance.
Many of Wooden’s leadership principles have entered common management parlance: “Don’t mistake activity for achievement;” “Be quick but don’t hurry;” “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail;” and “Little things make big things happen.” Wooden on Leadership is replete with wisdom and wit. Trained as an English teacher, Wooden is crisp and concise in making his points.
Wooden leaves a long legacy. Wooden’s players and coaches have subsequently won no fewer than 20 collegiate and pro championships. He has mentored assistant coaches who have themselves had illustrious careers, including Hall-of-Famer Denny Crum. But it is the personal impact on his players that appears most lasting. As Bill Walton, who frequently tested Wooden as a player, recently wrote as a tribute to his former coach:
John Wooden is still our coach in so many ways. And just as if it were 30 years ago.., he is there with us to this very day. Pushing, shaping, molding, challenging, driving us to be better. To be faster… While our practices were the most demanding endeavors that I’ve ever been a part of, so physically, emotionally, mentally and psychologically taxing, there is always the sense of joy, of celebration and of people having fun playing a simple game. Always positive, always constructive, John Wooden drives us in ways and directions that we are not aware of, always with the goal of making us better…. Of course we didn’t understand or realize any of this while we were living it. We thought he was nuts, crazy…. I thank John Wooden every day for all his selfless gifts, his lessons, his time, his vision and especially his patience. This is why we call him coach.
Author’s Note: Paul Asel is partner at the venture capital firm Nokia Growth Partners. He is co-author of the 2003 book, Upward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business Leaders Reached Their Summits. He can be reached at Paul.Asel@Nokia.com.
