What Marks the Start of Your Season?

 

It’s no secret to those who know me, I’m a football fan. With the recent start of the high school and college football seasons, and the NFL season upon us, it’s one of my favorite times of the year. But it also has me thinking about what marks the start of your season? And more importantly, how will you win?

Every team starts the seasons with goals. Sometimes the ultimate prize of a championship is the only target on the list. Other times, more incremental goals such as conference championships, bowl games, making the playoffs are set as the target with the opportunity to adjust and modify along the way. Coaches spend months preparing, studying  their personnel, installing their systems, developing a game plan, and hopefully creating a culture where everyone understands their role. Once the ball is kicked off, the plan alone doesn’t win the game;
execution does.

Leadership really isn’t that different. Great leadership is essentially great coaching and exceptional coaching is essentially a demonstration of excellent leadership. Most organizations and teams have a plan. They have strategic plans, improvement plans, annual goals, budgets, initiatives, and lists of priorities. They hold kickoff meetings and talk about where we want to go. The challenge is what happens after kickoff.

Good football teams win because they execute the fundamentals consistently. They block, tackle, communicate, minimize mistakes, and accomplish their assignment consistently in practice, during every game and throughout a season. When something isn’t working, they make adjustments with ease and accept new assignments and understand it aligns with the short and long-term goals.

Good organizations do the same thing. They communicate clearly, make decisions, follow through, hold people accountable, support the team goals, and when the plan isn’t working, have the courage to adjust it. In business you can't wait until the end of the season to look at the scoreboard. If you do, you’ll have lost individual customers, marketshare, or even worse, confidence from your own team. 

Great coaches and leaders are constantly evaluating what is happening. Are we moving the ball or doing the right work? Where are we struggling and why? Are people in the right positions? What adjustments need to be made? Sometimes the original game plan is right while others times call for a new play or a game plan adjustment. Other times it's just a matter of getting back to the fundamentals and execution.

One of the key fundamentals is follow-through. If you tell someone you are going to do something, do it. If you can't, tell them why. If the plan changes, communicate the change. Close the loop. Trust isn't usually lost on one big play. More often, it disappears a few yards at a time through missed commitments, unanswered questions, delayed decisions, and things that simply never get finished. The same is true for building trust. It happens a few yards at a time.

So as football teams across the country begin another season, maybe it is a good time for the rest of us to think about our business. What does winning look like for your organization this season? What's your game plan and has it been communicated? Most importantly; when the ball is kicked off, how will you execute? At the end of the season, nobody remembers how good the game plan looked on paper. They remember the results.

If you need help with developing, communicating, and executing a plan for your organization, reach out to me for assistance.

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