The Score Takes Care of Itself

by Bill Walsh

  The fact that we had seemingly no options forced us to come up with new options—the West Coast Offense. But should desperation be the primary determinant for seeking new direction, innovative solutions?

  Without any grand vision for changing NFL football, we changed it. It was made possible, in large part, because the brilliant leader of our team, Paul Brown, was a great facilitator. Paul Brown allowed me to be creative, encouraged and listened to my ideas (many of them counterintuitive), and put them into practice with the Cincinnati Bengals. Among his gifts, Paul Brown was a perceptive, astute, and shrewd listener who did not fear change.

  Share the Glory

  Here’s a lesson for any leader interested in nourishing the spirit of the organization. Paul Brown, for all of his gifts, was not inclined to give credit for the new ideas I was bringing to his team. For a period of time, many on the outside assumed he was the one putting pencil to paper as architect of an emerging paradigm for offensive football in the NFL. He did not go out of his way to dissuade them; giving credit where credit was due was not something he liked to do, at least with me.

  Brown was very protective of his public image as the one who made all the decisions—the boss. For example, he wanted it to look like he was calling the plays during a game, even though I was up in the booth making the decisions. For the sake of appearances, he set up a time-consuming and counterproductive process to accomplish this. I called the play down to an assistant coach on the sideline, who then relayed my decision to Brown. He would then pull aside a player and tell him what “he” had chosen, and the player would shuttle in the decision to our quarterback. Of course, the crowd thought Brown made the call himself. Obviously, this was an impediment to swift communication and hurt us from time to time. Brown was willing to pay that price to convey the impression that he was running the whole show.

  When I became a head coach, the leader of my own organization, I tried to avoid his mistake and attempted to give ample credit to those working with me. Few things offer greater return on less investment than praise—offering credit to someone in your organization who has stepped up and done the job.

  Write Your Own Script for Success: Flying by the Seat of Your Pants (Is No Way to Travel)

  Here’s a story to illustrate what can happen if you don’t think things through, if you’re a leader who doesn’t have an appetite for looking perceptively into the future and then planning what to do when you get there.

  The local fire department was called in to help rescue a cat stuck up in a tall tree. After a couple of hours, they got the cat down from the tree. During all the congratulations afterward, the fire truck drove off and ran over the cat. Despite their hard work, they had no plan for what to do after the cat was rescued.

  Contingency planning is critical for a fire department, football team, or company and is a primary responsibility of leadership. You must continually be anticipating and preparing to deal with what management expert Peter Drucker characterized as “foul weather.” He viewed it as the most important job of leadership. He may be right, but I would expand Drucker’s category to include “fine weather”—what you’ll do if the cat is rescued.

  Having a well-thought-out plan ready to go in advance of a change in the weather is the key to success. I came to understand this when I realized that making decisions off the top of my head was a recipe for a bad decision—especially under pressure.

  When I was the quarterback coach with the Cincinnati Bengals, this led me to start planning our first four offensive plays before the opening kickoff. In other words, I predetermined—wrote down—our first four plays. Head coach Paul Brown would ask, “What have you got for openers, Bill?” He wanted to know what I had come up with to get us going on our first possession, when nerves are on edge and clear thinking easily muddled in the middle of all the commotion.

  I never really thought of taking it much beyond that until an event occurred in my final game with Cincinnati—an AFC play-off against the Raiders in the Oakland Coliseum. The winner would advance to the AFC championship game with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

  In the closing moments, we recovered a fumble on Oakland’s forty-yard line. We were trailing by three points, 31-28; a field goal would send us into overtime. My job was to figure out how to get us within range of a field-goal attempt quickly. Unfortunately, the severe pressure and absolute pandemonium—thousands of Oakland’s fans howling and throwing half-eaten hot dogs, half-empty cups of beer, crumpled-up game programs, and even clothes and shoes up at the booth where I was sitting—destroyed my thinking. Raiders fans in those days were rowdy.

  I completely forgot the plays we had practiced that would have worked best under those circumstances, but equally important, I recognized (in retrospect) that I had no specific plan for what to do in that “foul-weather” circumstance. Thus, Oakland regained possession of the ball. Surprisingly, we still got one last chance to score with fifteen seconds to play.

  But again, no plan. I was flying by the seat of my pants; we lost. “Never again,” I vowed, “will that happen to me.” That’s when I got serious about scripting; never again would I walk into the future unprepared for foul weather.

  Consequently the number of plays I planned out—scripted—increased substantially the following year when I was with the San Diego Chargers as Tommy Prothro’s offensive coordinator. The next year, when I was head coach at Stanford University, the number increased again, and the impact was startling. In fact, during my second season, Stanford scored on our first possession eight times in eleven games. Typically during a season a team might score once or twice on the initial drive of a game.

  This success wasn’t an accident; I had written the script for our success. Informed preplanning—looking perceptively into the future and getting ready for it—gave the Stanford football team a distinct advantage. I took that advantage with me when I was hired by the 49ers.

  At San Francisco our first twenty or twenty-five plays of the game would be scripted, along with a multitude of options, alternatives, and contingency plays depending on the situation and circumstance. Among other things, it plugged me into the future; I was visualizing the game ahead, “seeing” what would happen. I could close my eyes and literally see all twenty-two men running and responding to some specific play I had drawn up.

  I was the first to employ scripting to this extent, and it gave us a stunning tactical offensive asset that no other teams were utilizing at that time. Scripting was a most effective leadership tool in fair and foul weather. In a very calculated way, I began calling the plays for the game before the game was played. It took years for other teams to fully implement the concepts I had been developing for a long time.

  The motto of the Boy Scouts, “Be Prepared,” became my modus ope randi, and to be prepared I had to factor in every contingency: good weather, bad weather, and everything in between. I kept asking and answering this question: “What do I do if . . . ?”

  It’s the same for you, of course: “What do you do if . . . ?” Most leaders take this no deeper than the first level of inquiry. You must envision the future deeply and in detail—creatively—so that the unforeseeable becomes foreseeable. Then you write your script for the foreseeable.

  I learned through years of coaching that far-reaching contingency planning gave me a tremendous advantage against the competition because I was no different from anyone else; it was almost impossible for me to make quick and correct decisions in the extreme emotional and mental upheaval that accompanied many situations during a game. I defy you to think as well—as clearly—under great stress as you do in normal circumstances. I don’t care how smart or quick-witted you are, what your training or intellect is; under extreme stress you’re not as good. Unless, that is, you’ve planned and thought through the steps you’re going to take in all situations—your contingency plans.

  With the 49ers I began asking my offensive coaches to give me their twenty-five scripted plays; then I’d revise and add my own to their ide
as. We’d go over the new list with the team; they wanted those plays and would raid my office to get them. Randy Cross, a big offensive lineman and one of only a few to play on San Francisco’s first three Super Bowl teams, would come in and say, “I want those plays, Bill, where are they?”

  Randy and the others wanted them so they could start thinking about them. During a practice I’d tell them, “This is the first play of the game on Sunday.” Right away the expectation level would pop up. Now they connected practice with the game. The scripted plays extended that.

  The players and coaches could sleep a little better because I had alleviated some of the deep anxiety caused by uncertainty prior to the competition; they were somewhat relieved because they could anticipate what we’d do in the opening stages of the battle.

  I took scripting very seriously; my preplanning was done in a clinical atmosphere on Thursday and Friday—sometimes Saturday, the day before a game. Planning even one day ahead was usually much better than trying to make a decision in the heat of the contest amid the clatter and chaos. In doing so, I reduced the possibility of panic-driven, ill-conceived decisions.

  Developing the plays may have taken more energy from me than the game, but once the scripting was complete, I felt we could breathe easier; now all we had to do was perform. It made it possible for me to almost always get a good night’s sleep before the opening kickoff—even a Super Bowl.

  Scripting was a preprepared format, a flexible blueprint that I used to navigate through the turmoil, uncertainty, and stress of competition. “If this situation arises, we do this; if this happens, we do that.” On and on. It was almost by the numbers; the minute those new situations came up, I’d go to the contingency play that I had worked up in advance and printed on the script on my clipboard.

  If I’d done my work properly, little would arise that hadn’t been anticipated; we’d seldom be caught off guard or have to come up with a plan in a panic. Of course, there’s always something you can’t anticipate, but you strive to greatly reduce the number of those unforeseeables. A good example of readiness for anything, one of many hundreds I could refer back to, occurred in the last moments of a game between San Francisco and my former team, the Cincinnati Bengals.

  With two seconds remaining on the clock, trailing 26-20, the 49ers took possession of the ball on the Bengals’ twenty-five-yard line. We had time to run one play. While this might suggest a last-ditch-effort mode, some version of a “Hail Mary pass,” it was not. I had a contingency plan scripted for a situation exactly like this—time enough for one play, ball on the opponent’s twenty-five- to thirty-yard line, needing a touchdown. (The scripted play was called “tandem left 76 all go.” Three receivers lined up on the left side; a fourth, Jerry Rice, on the right. Joe Montana took the snap, dropped back five steps, looked left, pump faked, turned right, and threw to Rice, who was almost alone in the end zone.) Touchdown; point after; final score 27-26.

  While I was ecstatic with the dramatic finish that produced victory, the manner in which we achieved it was almost routine because I had anticipated and prepared our team for that exact situation. Scripting did not lock me into a play or series of plays. Some observers didn’t understand it: “You mean if you’re on the two-yard line, you’re still going to throw the long pass if it’s next on the script?” Obviously, no. If Steve Young threw a completion that put us suddenly on the two-yard line, bang, I’d go to the play chosen earlier for that situation, which had factored in score, field position, conditions, time remaining, and more. It was not a robotic response system. Rarely did we go straight by the numbers, one through twenty-five. Usually it would be more like one through four; seven through ten; back to five and six; then perhaps a play from page three of my laminated sheets on the clipboard.

  The contingency scripting provided a well-thought-out basis for situational decision making and action, but from start to finish our entire team, especially the assistant coaches, were intensely analyzing every single thing that happened on the field and looking for the right response, whether it was scripted or not. There was tremendous flexibility, creativity, and adaptability applied to what I had on the clipboard in front of me, just as there should be for you and your organization.

  By analyzing, planning, and rehearsing in advance you can make a rational decision, the best choice for the situation at hand. And that still leaves room for those gut-instinct decisions you may want to make. This is true in the context of offensive strategy, a contract negotiation, a sales meeting, and a vast array of other business situations I can think of.

  Michael Ovitz, a top talent agent in Hollywood for many years and later president of the Walt Disney Company, recognized the link between scripting and success: “Every detail is important. Where do you have a meeting? What is the surrounding environment? People who don’t think about these things have a harder time in business. It’s got to be the right place. It’s got to be the right color. It’s got to be the right choice. Everything has to be strategized. You have to know where you’re going to come out before you go in. Otherwise you lose.” (New York Times, May 9, 1999.) Scripting and strategizing are simply two different words for fair- and foul-weather leadership.

  Instead of saying to myself, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it when it happens; I’ll think of something even if it means drawing a play in the dirt with my finger,” I had already carefully thought through the situation and come up with an answer.

  I’d come to see that the intense pressure and confusion of the game could cloud my mind and I might start “swinging at shadows,” so to speak—seeing things that weren’t really there or were distorted in my mind by the chaos of the moment. Contingency planning cleared away the clouds and removed the shadows. It brought clarity to what could be a confusing situation.

  Consequently, you must not only have a plan but also prepare for what happens if the plan works or fails or if an unexpected situation suddenly requires a completely different approach. What then? And what happens after that? And after that?

  The military is known for doing this—war gaming, thinking through its response to all contingencies. The more thorough, the more extensive, the more rehearsed, the better you perform under the pressure of any situation that calls for an immediate decision.

  Here is a very tiny sampling of the contingencies I would “war game”: What if we fall behind by two or more touchdowns in the first quarter? What is the best defensive strategy with the wind at our back? What if the offense starts to sputter in the second half? What do we consider defensively when facing a strong wind? What if specific key players are injured? What if we are ahead by two touchdowns early in the fourth quarter? What is the best offensive strategy in a heavy rain? What precautions can be taken to ensure effective communications amid the noise of hostile spectators?

  Those are a few of the general situational circumstances I wanted to have answers for before they arose in a game. I got more specific on the “script” I carried on a clipboard during the game, as evidenced by this sample of third-down situations from the open field (as opposed to the red zone) that would result in a package of plays tailored to the following down and distance situations: third down and short (i.e., two to four yards), third and medium (i.e., five to seven yards), third and long (i.e., eight to eleven yards). Within that third-down category, I also scripted what we would do against the nickel blitz and the nickel zone defense. Each had a specific scripted response on my clipboard.

  I include those examples (knowing they’re probably tedious to read) to illustrate how thorough I became in creating a response to every foreseeable circumstance, how many levels of scrutiny I applied, how hard I worked at turning “unforeseeables” into “foreseeables.”

  Be prepared? I was prepared for almost anything, just as you should be. I never wanted to be in a situation where I would kick myself later and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened to me up in the booth near the end of the Bengals/Raiders
play-off game.

  What is the width and depth of the intellect you have applied to your own team’s contingency planning? What is the extent of your own “scripting”? What could happen tomorrow, next week, or next year that you haven’t planned for, aren’t ready to deal with, or have put in the category of “I’ll worry about that when the time comes”? Planning for the future shouldn’t be postponed until the future arrives.

  When you’re thorough in your preparation—“scripting” is a part of it—you can almost go on automatic pilot and reduce the chance of making emotional and ill-considered decisions. Scripting allowed me to take randomness and stress out of the decision-making process. The result is a very adaptable but intelligent plan for the future.

  My planning was not limited to plays on the football field, of course, but also to the big picture. A leader must see the forest and the trees. In 1987, for example, the 49ers were very strong at the quarterback position. Future Hall-of-Famer Joe Montana’s backup was the very capable Jeff Kemp. When Joe was injured and missed eight games during the season, I had to look at a foul-weather situation of a team minus Montana at some point in the future. At the conclusion of the season, we quickly moved to acquire Tampa Bay’s Steve Young, a potentially great quarterback whose potential had not been realized. (This was done expeditiously because our owner, Eddie DeBartolo, was inclined to act fast when he deemed it necessary. When our decision was made, he simply picked up the phone and called Hugh Culverhouse, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The deal was done in minutes.)

  Young would be my “contingency plan” in the event that Joe faltered. This was a very controversial move that many, including Montana, were not very happy about. None of them, however, was charged with principal responsibility for charting the future of the team. That was my job—planning for fair and foul weather.