Page 243 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Adversity Is Your Asset
As a leader, you must play the hand you’re dealt even when you 225
don’t like the cards—even when fate frowns on you. A few months
after those Saturday night phone calls, the Woodens were in Cali-
fornia and I was conducting practice as the newly arrived head
coach of the UCLA Bruins. But fate soon intervened again, this
time in an ironic way—good fortune became misfortune.

MAKE THE BEST OF IT
When overflow crowds began showing up for UCLA’s games in the
cramped quarters of the third floor court of the Men’s Gym, the
fire marshal forced us to pack up and play home games elsewhere:
Venice High School, Long Beach Municipal Auditorium, Long
Beach City College, Pan Pacific Auditorium, Santa Monica City
College, and others. We even played a home game at Bakersfield
Junior College, which is 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
For many years we had no home court or the advantages that
come with it. I tried to turn the disadvantage to our advantage, to
do the best I could under the circumstances that fate—a fire
marshal—had imposed.
I told our players, “This will make you stronger when you play
opponents on their own home court, because we’ll be conditioned
to the disruption and distractions of traveling.” And it did. The
players made fate their friend. (I had been assured when I came to
UCLA that the tiny Men’s Gym would soon be replaced by an ad-
equate facility. Seventeen years later it finally got done.)
Later, misfortune hit us again when the Bruins began practice in
1965–1966 as defending national champions. I felt we would start
the year with an even stronger team than the one that had just won
the NCAA title seven months earlier; so much experienced talent
was returning to play for another year. However, while talent and
experience is a potent package, it is not as potent as fate.