Lessons on Accountability from the Football Field
I'm currently reading the management book THE RADICAL LEAP by Steve Farber. I was reminded of the excerpt below from from http://www.chasmgroup.com/underthebuzz.htm
Lessons on Accountability from the Football Field
(From a discussion with Steve Young, former 49'ers Quarterback)
Since his retirement from the NFL in 2000, Steve Young, former Superbowl-winning quarterback for the San Francisco 49'ers, has begun to fashion what he learned in professional football about the importance of individuals taking responsibility for their actions - even to the extent of turning apparently impossible game situations around - into a highly relevant theme for businesses to learn from.
Young make a persuasive case that, besides being 'just a game', football is a real laboratory of human experience with particular value for leadership and teamwork in all activities of consequence, especially including business. Below are some examples of quotes from the conversation we had when Young visited our firm's offices several weeks ago. One telling lesson for us as we listened to his analogies between the sports field and business, was that businesses would be much more successful if they practiced to a similar extent that professional footballers do, instead of managing by the seat of their pants (go on, admit it, this does occasionally happen in high-tech organizations!). In a parallel between sports and war, Young reminded us that although "armies practice a lot, when combat starts, all hell breaks loose", thus inferring that practice is especially critical if you are in a fight for survival, despite the likelihood that a certain amount of disordered conflict is likely to ensue.
Read on for more instructive parallels from Young regarding sports and 'real life':
On learning to find the 'invisible' receiver:
"People don't realize perhaps that, when you are a 6'1" quarterback, there are many times when you can't see the receivers, because of these enormous defensive backs coming at you and blocking your view. After missing a number of times in the early days and being asked why, I would say: 'I couldn't see the receiver!' The response invariably was, 'Well, you'd better find a way to see him'. After spending some time puzzling over this, I started throwing to where I hoped or expected the receiver to be. I would act on the last sighting I had, and became a player who could play blind."
On not seeing the results of a great play:
"I started it, but because of those huge human beings coming at me and occasionally sacking me, I didn't get to see the result of my throw … but I would then find out that something great had happened. To do this, I learned to make my living as a quarterback by reading the receiver's body language. One of the reasons that (Jerry) Rice is such a great receiver is that he transmits great body language - he probably doesn't realize it, but he does. This whole thing about passing blind and reading body language taught me a lot about the importance of having faith in your team-mates."
On never being able to do enough to satisfy some people's requirements:
"Despite my attempts to explain how difficult it was to get the ball to him, Jerry Rice would curve his arms close to his body in a ball-catching pose, and say, 'That's OK, but … (I need the ball) right here!"
On being accountable:
"One of the critical things about being a quarterback is that you have to realize that the whole team is working to protect you and provide this cocoon around you; so you have to do just one thing - which is, do something good with the ball. But when you get intercepted (as I was 202 times in my NFL career), everyone kinda freezes and just looks at you … If that's all that happens, everyone slumps their shoulders and goes off the field, feeling pretty deflated. What I learned from these painful occurrences is how critical it is to rally the team, and it's really quite simple to do. I would just say 'I screwed up. It won't happen again, so let's go back to the touchline, get a drink of water, come back out ready to play, and kick their asses!'"
On what happens when no one is accountable:
"In the absence of (at least) one person being accountable, you get a sudden vacuum, into which a swarm of opinions fly; soon, political camps form, team spirit and resolution dissolves, and you can quickly suffer the downward spiral toward defeat."
Toward the end of our meeting, I was reminded for no particular reason of the contrasting situation in which people fail to accept full accountability for their decisions and actions, preferring instead to blame others. This is neatly summarized in a popular saying about certain types of soccer coach in Brazil, whose attitude regarding accountability is exemplified by the 'person' they use when alluding to contrasting results obtained over time by the teams they were responsible for coaching to victory: "I won. We tied. They lost."
The lessons brought out by Steve Young undoubtedly have value for business leaders, especially at a time when blame and accusation are flying back and forth regarding the accounting fraud, insider trades, and other excesses committed by company executives during the recent economic boom and bubble. At a time when American society has also been hit hard by the 9/11 attacks of a year ago, people seem to have a clearer sense of what it means to be responsible for one's actions. And, for managers and executives in technology companies, where exercising accountability for missed goals, targets and deadlines is often an elusive aspiration, the image of someone on the football field understanding so clearly where their responsibility begins and ends - as Young clearly did - should serve as some kind of example.