Page 26 - How to Create a Winning Organization

Wooden on Leadership
8
For most of my life I have believed that success is found in the
running of the race. How you run the race—your planning, prepa-
ration, practice, and performance—counts for everything. Win-
ning or losing is a by-product, an aftereffect, of that effort. For me,
it’s the quality of your effort that counts most and offers the great-
est and most long-lasting satisfaction.
Cervantes had it right: “The journey is better than the inn.”
Most people don’t understand what he means, but thanks to my
father I do. The joy is in the journey of pushing yourself to the out-
ward limits of your ability and teaching your organization to do
the same.
I believe most great competitors share this feeling. They recog-
nize that the ultimate reward is in the competitive process itself
rather than some subsequent gain or glory brought about by win-
ning. Thus, in all my years of coaching I rarely, if ever, even uttered
the word win, talked about “beating” an opponent, or exhorted a
team to be number one, including those picked by experts to win
national championships.
Instead, my words and actions always reflected Joshua Hugh
Wooden’s early advice—“Never cease trying to be the best you can
become”—and were directed at helping those under my leadership
achieve success as I came to define it.
And starting in the winter of 1934 as a first-year English teacher
and coach at Kentucky’s Dayton High School I defined it precisely
like this: “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-
satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of
which you are capable.”
This definition hasn’t changed since it was coined, nor do I
think a change is required now. I’ve been teaching it to those under
my leadership for my entire adult life, and it has proven effective.
There is a standard higher than merely winning the race: Effort is
the ultimate measure of your success.