Great Programs are Built on Strong Values
Building a successful culture that perpetuates based on our foundational core values will indeed be one that produces wins for everyone involved, but winning won’t be the sole motivation for the great people we attract to our team through this process. High standards, consistently exceeding expectations, and an atmosphere of genuine accountability will be just as important. While I’ve never followed college or professional sports all that closely, with one exception I’ll get to shortly, I have studied several legendary coaches; not just because of the results their teams achieved, but more to learn why they consistently attracted outstanding talent and how they were able to get those all-star athletes to form a cohesive team.
In the spring of 2001, I heard Lou Holtz speak. Coincidentally, that was part of the same event where I heard John Maxwell speak for the first time - just weeks after initially reading The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Holtz shared some hilarious stories, but the one that stood out most was about benching two Notre Dame players just before the team’s Orange Bowl appearance. These weren’t just any players; they were responsible for over fifty percent of the scoring throughout the season. He explained that it wasn’t his choice, it was theirs. He had set a curfew for team members for the night prior to each game. All season long, players were expected to be in by a given time or they’d sit out the first half of the game. Those two players chose to violate that curfew the night before their biggest game of the year. I won’t share his entire story here, but the team won the game, largely because Holtz had built a team around a set of core values rather than around any individual players. In recent lesson Cindy and I shared with a group, I quoted Holtz as saying, “I’ve coached good players and I’ve coached bad players. I’m a better coach with good players.” As true as that may be, those good players only have a shot at reaching their full potential when foundational values are in place.
Another amazing coach I’ve studied is Joe Gibbs. Interestingly enough, I heard him speak at event with Maxwell one year after hearing Lou Holtz. Gibbs is the only person that I’m aware of who has led teams to championships in two different professional sports; the Washington Redskins in football and Tony Stewart’s Home Depot team in NASCAR. He shared some great insight in that 2002 session, but the most memorable lesson was from his book, Racing to Win. If you know anything about Tony Stewart, you know he developed quite the reputation for being a hothead. Hell, that’s why I liked him! In the book, Gibbs shared how he finally had to address it. Tony was winning races and racking up points, but his temper was not exemplifying the values that Gibbs and Home Depot were willing to build around. He sat Stewart down and explained the changes they expected, and the path he’d be choosing if he chose not to make those changes. Their championship came after that conversation…
Yet another example is Mike Krzyzewski, also known as Coach K, longtime head coach at Duke. Long before the destruction of college sports we’ve seen unfold due to the NIL model, Coach K routinely attracted top-tier high school talent every year. While his teams consistently had winning records, I’m convinced this wasn’t the primary driver with just five NCAA championships over the course of 42 years and only two of those being back-to-back. Based on all I found through studying his books and hearing from someone I knew who was close with him at the time, those who came to play for him did so because he earned a reputation for bringing out the best in each of them and building strong teams. He worked those teams hard, all around a set of core values.
For one final sports analogy, let’s consider the Boston Red Sox, the only team I’ve ever followed closely over the years. As a kid, they were my absolute favorite team - in any sport. I mentioned earlier that everyone “wants to be part of a winning team” but that clearly wasn’t what drew me to the pre-2004 Red Sox. I opened part two of Leading With A Clear Purpose with a chapter titled “It Ain’t (Just) About the Pay, Purpose Matters!” The same holds true for values and accountability. What I loved about those Red Sox, even as perennial losers (86 years without winning a World Series), was the underdog spirit and their constant grit against the hated New York Yankees. That said, I remember exactly when I stopped following them closely. Although I had always respected Terry Francona as a manager, and loved him for taking the team to World Series wins in 2004 and 2007, he didn’t maintain accountability with the team through the second half of the 2011 season and I’ve paid little attention to them as an organization since. I distinctly remember them losing 20 games in the last month of that season and missing the playoffs, all while star pitchers John Lackey (who I never really cared for) and Josh Beckett was being accused of drinking beer and eating fried chicken in the dugout during games. They denied it but something was clearly amiss for a team with so much talent to drop off so drastically, so fast. It pushed me away, but it also cost the team a spot in the post season.
As with each of these examples, how our organizations are built really does depend on what we do as leaders to embed our core values. With high expectations and consistent accountability, we can attract great people and built strong teams. Without that though, even the solid team members we have can slip through our hands. It all rests on whether we’re willing to take responsibility for upholding those core organizational values.
Values, Good or Bad, Tie Back to Leadership
While Terry Francona was the manager of the Boston Red Sox during that late season collapse in 2011, and his contract option wasn’t renewed afterward, I’m not placing the blame solely on him. Quite frankly, I thought John Lackey was a goon long before that. And while Francona held the “manager” title, there are tons of people within every professional baseball organization who have as much or more control over the purse strings and play a role in impacting the culture of the team. That said, we rarely know the names of those others, nor are they usually the ones moving to a new city and team following this kind of debacle.The manager, or whatever the position is called in a given sport, is the public facing leader in the organization.
One of the very first catch phrases I remember hearing from John Maxwell was “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” Over more than two and half decades of studying his work, I’ve heard him say that thousands of times. Through all that, one specific story stands out. John was sharing an interaction he had with a venture capital group with a long history of purchasing struggling businesses, turning those businesses around, then selling them at a substantial profit. John asked one of them if there were any specific things they did with every business, regardless of industry. They immediately responded that the first thing that’s done in every acquisition is get rid of the existing executive team. John pushed back, asking it that was necessary every time… The folks in the group were adamant that this was absolutely critical. If those executives were effective in their roles, the company wouldn’t have been struggling and in a position for this venture capital group to buy them out!
That example solidified John’s statement for me; everything truly does rise and fall on leadership. While Francona’s tenure in Boston ended after closing the 2011 season with a 7-20 September record, his role as a leader did not. He became the manager of the Cleveland Indians in 2013 and was named American League Manager of the Year that same year. He earned that designation two more times during his stint with the Indians/Guardians organization.
I’ve never met Terry Francona but what he’s achieved since that 2011 Red Sox melt down tells me that he shares one particular trait with the most effective leaders I’ve ever interacted with: he took responsibility for what happened around him and made changes. Although I don’t know the specific changes Francona made, the results he achieved in Cleveland speak for themselves. That said, I have had the opportunity to work directly with numerous leaders as they’ve encountered challenges. The common thread has been, regardless of which individual on their respective teams dropped a ball that created the issue initially, these leaders have been willing to accept responsibility personally rather than throwing a team member under the bus. Since I’ve referenced Craig so many times to this point, I’ll start with him. He and I have worked through several scenarios where clients came to him with complaints. Every single time, I’ve seen Craig take responsibility and work to find a solution. The friend I mention before that’s experienced 5X growth in less than a decade since purchasing his business used to have a sign on his desk that read “The Buck Stops Here”; not out of the kind of arrogance that would imply he had the last say, but to send the message to anyone coming to him that he’s always willing to help with an issue.
In looking at how this applies to our core organizational values, John’s statement is spot on: “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” If the culture isn’t one that’s attracting and keeping great people, that’s on us as leaders. If we’re blessed with a consistent stream of amazing candidates reaching out to join our team, that ties back to how we’ve instilled those values into the organizations we lead. But we can’t afford to take our foot off the gas! With that in mind, let’s consider just how frequently we need put our values in front of our team members.
Good Intentions Are Never Enough
I’ll quote John once more just to make sure it sinks in: “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” If we’re not excited about how our core values are currently serving as the foundation of our organization, that’s on us as leaders. If we are happy with that foundation, keep up the good work - and be sure to acknowledge everyone on the team who’s played a role in consistently modeling those values to get to this point. The best leaders I’ve ever had the privilege of working with have been quick to accept responsibility for missteps and even quicker to share the credit for success. All said, I’ve seen some really good people in leadership roles who have had the best of intentions but still fell far short of building a strong foundation around the values they held most dear. Good intentions are NEVER enough!
Through this process, I’ve provided multiple examples detailing how some of our closest friends and most cherished clients have instilled their core organizational values into the culture of the teams they lead. None of that has happened by accident; all of them have been diligent in talking about and exemplifying their values daily. And this hasn’t been something they were able to do for a short period before it took hold, it often takes years. For perspective, I’ll emphasize once more that it took Truett Cathy - the guy who invented God’s chicken sandwich - ten years to embed the “My Pleasure” that you and I expect to hear (multiple times in any Chick-fil-A visit today) into his organization’s standard behavior and vocabulary.
Cindy and I had two separate conversations recently where we’ve stressed exactly this, both with outstanding folks leading strong teams. In our last session with an executive team we’re supporting, we talked with the group extensively about the importance of ensuring every single member of their respective teams was crystal clear on the impact their organization was striving to achieve with each client they serve. One of the senior members of the group asked if it was possible to talk about their organization’s purpose too often. I was adamant that there’s no such thing as “too often” when our purpose is meaningful. The same holds true for weaving our values into conversations with our teams. When those values really matter, and I can’t think of a situation where they wouldn’t, there’s no such thing as too much.
In the second conversation, a key leader in an organization we work with shared what he perceived as resistance as he had started detailing an organizational purpose with his team. As we talked through this with him, it sounded more as though this team members were processing the idea than pushing back on it. We encouraged him to stay the course and be sure to include the impact they’re having on everyone they serve in each conversation he has with his team; as a group and one-on-one.
Much like many great people we’ve worked with over the years, both of these leaders cared deeply about each member of their teams. Neither wanted to come across as sharing a canned message or being redundant. All too often, we understand the message we’ve shared with our team and assume they’ve received it just as we expressed it. We have the best of intentions; intentions for making a positive impact on everyone involved without coming across as too pushy. But even with the best intentions, we can fall far short of our goal. Having a framework for detailing our values explicitly and consistently enough to build them into the foundation of our organization is crucial. To wrap up this entire process, we’ll work through a simple and strategic process for leading from a foundation of clearly defined core values.