How to Win Six Super Bowls

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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors.

This week I want to talk about how to win six Super Bowls. Well, I've never won a Super Bowl. Where does this come from? This is an article from Bill Belichick, famously the former coach of the New England Patriots, now the coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels football team. Subject for another vlog, perhaps. This was in the Wall Street Journal, April 26th through 27th, and for the life of me, I cannot remember who sent me this link. It was one of our members and I'm glad you did. Any links you want to send me along these lines, I would welcome them, but I totally forgot who it was, and I feel like a heel for that. But thank you to our members for keeping me on my toes and sending me enlightening articles.

All right, what about this is important to you? Well, I think if you think of Bill Belichick or Mike Krzyzewski or these famous coaches, they become bigger than coaches. I mean, these are leadership icons in the world, and is there something that you can learn as a contractor from Bill Belichick who happens to coach football? You bet you can. Mike Krzyzewski, you bet. Absolutely. There are things that you can learn from these people. So, there are three things that Belichick mostly wrote about in his article.

Basically, how to be successful. The first thing is the Patriot Way. He described it as a series of principles, rules of thumb, habits and philosophies. That's a quote from Bill Belichick. He said it was fundamental to our success, but then he said the Patriot Way doesn't exist, and I'm trying to reconcile this in my mind, but here's how he explained it. When we won, we kept what worked. When we lost, we eliminated the things that caused the loss. He said, "A big win isn't the end of anything. It's the beginning to try to win the next one." Boy, that is an ambitious mindset, but if you want to be a consistent winner, if you want to be the construction company that grows 10 or 15% a year, or you grew profits 10 or 15% a year, whatever, you have to have that mindset.

Okay, you had a great year, you had some great wins, maybe you put together three great years in a row, but that's not the end of anything. That's the beginning of trying to figure out how to win the next three years in your organization. That is a really challenging concept. But if you think about the consistent winners, Krzyzewski, Phil Jackson, those people, that's their mindset. Losing is absolutely unacceptable. And when you do lose, you figure out why so that you can eliminate those items and build better strengths.

Okay, the second thing is, "Big moments are won by winning all the small moments." Another profound comment. He said they rarely did anything that they hadn't done before, and they treated big games the same way as they treated all the others. He gave an example in the article about going on a fourth and long in a Super Bowl, something that they had never done during the regular season, and it was something that they really weren't prepared for. It was a decision he made on the spur of the moment. In hindsight he said he should have kicked the field goal, a short field goal, hoping to have enough time later to make up the other four-point difference, and they didn't do it, and it was outside of their model, and it cost them a Super Bowl and he really regretted it.

And then finally, and this is what he spent... If you look at the column inches of the article, this is what he spent most of the article talking about, a four-word phrase. I messed that up. Taking responsibility. So, he said on any high-functioning team, you've got people that are willing to step up and say, "I messed that up." They take responsibility and for coaches in particular, they take responsibility for the losses. When there are wins, you give the players all the credit. But if you're the CEO and you suffer a loss of some sort, it's important for the CEO or the project leader or whoever was in a leadership position in that particular instance to step up and say, "I messed that up." Take the slings and arrows for your team. He said four things will happen. You'll delight your colleagues. It's important for people to hear from the boss that the boss is capable of screwing up. The third thing is the boss should say it the most, and the fourth thing is it will instill trust on your team when you say those four magic words, "I messed that up."

He said finally, and this is a quote, "Stick with what you've practiced and be ready to admit your mistakes." Now you take these three points and there's nothing explosive in there. There's nothing explosive about developing the most clever plays or overwhelming teams with your suffocating defense. It's nothing about that. The little things matter. I messed that up. There's nothing earth-shattering in any of that advice, but it allowed Belichick and the Patriots to win six Super Bowls, I think. That's pretty darn good. So let me know what you think.

This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors.

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