Page 164 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
146
“Little things make big things happen” is the phrase I used in
pointing out the importance of correct selection and perfection of
details. Of course, I recognize that a team also needs talent to make
big things happen, but talent alone won’t get the job done. Talent
must be nourished in an environment that demands the correct ex-
ecution of relevant details.
Although we never achieved perfection in basketball at UCLA,
we were ceaseless in our effort to attain that level of performance.
Only then is there some chance of approaching it—not attaining
it, but approaching it.
UCLA had four so-called perfect seasons (30–0) during my
years as head coach, and yet we never played a perfect game. How-
ever, we never ceased striving for the perfect play, the perfect pass,
the perfect game. And it all started, in my view, with teaching those
under my leadership how to put on their sweat socks “perfectly.”

DEFINE AVERAGE AS ABOVE AVERAGE
There was no single big thing that made our UCLA basketball
teams effective, not the press or the fast break, not size, not
condition—no single big thing. Instead, it was hundreds of small
things done the right way, and done consistently.
A leader must identify each of the many details that are most
pivotal to team success and then establish, and teach, a high stan-
dard of behavior or performance in executing those details. How
you—the leader—define “average” is how your team will define it.
Some leaders define average as average; some define average as
being significantly above average.
It is easy to be lazy when it comes to details. Laziness is a eu-
phemism for sloppiness, and sloppiness precludes any organization
from achieving competitive greatness and success. Your ability as
leader to set and achieve high standards in the domain of details—