Page 177 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Make Each Day Your Masterpiece
index cards containing a detailed schedule of each day’s practice. In 159
fact, I was called “The 3 × 5 Man” at UCLA, because the note cards
were always with me. I used them to write down the exact minute-
to-minute timetable for that day’s practice: who, what, when, and
where (including, for example, how many basketballs should be at a
particular location on the court at specific times during practice).
Some time after practice I would generally throw away my 3 × 5
cards after transferring their information into my private notebook
for later reference. In Part III of this book, you’ll see examples of how
each and every minute was accounted for in my practices at UCLA.
Although I no longer have the 3 × 5 cards or notebooks from my
years at South Bend Central, the system for organizing time dur-
ing my high school practices was the same. I didn’t use 3 × 5 cards
in my English classes, but the strict budgeting of minutes within
the hour was similar. In fact, as I mentioned, the written format-
ting for teaching the English curriculum served as my prototype
for basketball practice.
I had a fetish about using time efficiently—not wasting it.
Bustling bodies making noise can be deceptive. It doesn’t mean that
anything is actually being accomplished. Activity must be orga-
nized with a productive purpose or goal in mind; otherwise it’s no
different from what you’d see on a school’s playground—kids run-
ning around, lots of movement but little achievement.
I’ve observed hundreds of practices by other coaches over the
years. I got so I could tell in minutes whether or not that coach
knew how to handle time. There’s a tautness in how things are
run—no slackness, sloppiness, or standing around. It’s like sailing
a ship whose sails are tight in the wind rather than fluttering in the
breeze. It is the effective leader who creates that tautness in an
organization.
The assistant coaches also carried my 3 × 5 cards that contained
the same detailed information. We made sure to hold to our pre-