Page 150 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
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It only took him about 15 seconds, but he dramatically
broadened my understanding of the role I needed to play on
the team. Coach used a variety of ways to teach what he
wanted you to learn. Sometimes during practice he would
have the guards switch positions with the forwards—have us
do the other guy’s job. He wanted everybody to understand
the requirements of the player in the other positions. Coach
Wooden wanted the guard to appreciate the challenges a for-
ward faced and the forward to appreciate what a guard had to
deal with.
He worked very hard to figure out ways to have us think
like a team, to work as a unit, not every man out for himself.
I chose UCLA because of how he conducted practices (I
had watched the Bruins at the Men’s Gym while I was in high
school). I was so impressed by his control of the practice, to-
tally in charge.
He had his 3 × 5 cards and notes and was always looking
at the clock to stay on time. He went from one drill to an-
other and then another and another—complete organization;
no fooling around, no lulls. He was a master of using time ef-
ficiently. Coach could tell you exactly what he had done in
practice on that same day 10 years earlier at 4:35 p.m.
He believed that winning is a result of process, and he was
a master of the process, of getting us to focus on what we were
doing rather than the final score. One drill he had was to run
a play over and over at full speed, but he wouldn’t let us shoot
the ball. He made us concentrate on what happened before
the shot was taken, what happened to make it possible. He
made us focus on execution. He built teams that knew how
to execute.
You knew you were in trouble when you heard him say,
“Goodness gracious, sakes alive!” Big trouble. You knew the