Anson Dorrance Quotes

“ We don't want people to think the way to happiness in sport is to have these careers where they never lose a game and you're the best player in the world,”  “ A lot of what happens in sport challenges your character. And the way you negotiate these difficult environments, in our
opinion, is a measure of who you are. You get to express who you are through the victories and defeats of your game.”
Usually a championship team is built on a strong defense. That's something you can bring to every game. A great attack is always going to be inconsistent - at least on the scoreboard - that's the nature of the game." Anson Dorrance in "The Vision of a Champion. 

Competition is the key to developing players

EXCELLENCE IS ACTUALLY MUNDANE
Excellence is accomplished through deliberate actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, made into habits, compounded together, added up over time. Since it is mundane, it is within reach of everyone, all the time. Please don't confuse this with success. In competitive athletics success is mutually exclusive...there are winners and losers..one team finishes first and another one last.
So this is your challenge:

• through deliberate actions (the things players do in training)
• ordinary in themselves (everyone is doing them, there are no real secrets).
• performed consistently (done on a regular basis).
• and carefully (with high standards and consummate focus)
• made into habits (coached into your technical, tactical, psychological and physical fabric)
• compounded together (with an understanding of harnessing all the elements)
• added up over time (done when appropriate on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis).

Focus & Discipline

•  Your margin of success is based on your inner drive. 
• This focus and self-discipline is also a great element of your character.

Commitment & Courage

• You can see examples of commitment and courage in athletics every day. We talk about these traits with our UNC players.

• One of the crucial aspects when we play with defensive presence is getting "stuck in," a common British expression for an aggressive player who gets in tackles, or sticks her face in where the ball is going, risking taking a knock or getting whacked. 
• We describe those without this all-out physical courage as humming birds.

Taking Responsibility

• Do you know the kind of player who always finds an excuse when she fails? When something isn't going well, she whines or blames someone else. 
• . When faced with challenges, or problems, look within yourself and decide what you can do to make things better.

The Winning Mentality

• This mentality is a description of the strength of your psychological dimension. 
• It involves your capacity to reach down inside and find your inner hardness. It's what happens when you emerge triumphant from any physical duel or combative situation. The winning mentality is partly optimism, but mostly it's a combination of focus, pride, competitive anger, relentlessness, hardness, fitness and courage -
• This type of mentality is not about your skills or tactics. What it comes down to is intense desire. To get this winning edge, you need to build an indomitable will. This means you must be relentless; you must never give up.

Transcending Ordinary Effort

• Ordinary effort is when you're comfortable. That's mediocrity. A lot of athletes work within their comfort zone, physically and technically. They don't feel like they're going to lose control, or pass out from fatigue. 
• In a game situation, the other team is trying to take you out of your comfort zone. So, as soon as they do, you're in unfamiliar territory. You panic. You make a mistake, or lose the ball.
• The challenge for you as an individual athlete is to find a way to elevate your environment. This is not easy. You likely have to set your own standards of practice performance. You are part of a team sport, in which coaches and your teammates are critical for motivation.

Vision

Vision is a mental journey from the known to the unknown, creating the future from a montage of current facts, hopes, dreams, dangers and opportunities." Hickman & Silva

"Vision comes mostly through preparation.  Leaders acquire vision by seeking sources from any appropriate source-- from history, books, reports, observation, and especially from other people."

Vision comes from intelligence and intelligence comes from preparation.

We are limited not by our abilities, but by our vision." unknown

“Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing the time. Action with Vision is making a positive difference.” Joel Barker

RIng the Bell

While working on my grad school I came across a great concept. 
The concept of "Jidoka"
What does jidoka mean? A common answer to this question is "autonomation" or "automation with a human touch." This is usually illustrated by example of a machine that will detect a problem and stop production automatically rather than continue to run and produce bad output.
The principle's origin goes back to 1902 when Sakichi Toyoda invented a simple but ingenious mechanism that detected a broken thread and shut off an automatic loom. That invention allowed one operator to oversee the operation of up to a dozen looms while maintaining perfect quality. But the system goes much further.
The jidoka pillar is often labeled "stop and respond to every abnormality." This is obviously much more than having a machine shut down. Toyota refers to every process, whether human or automatic, being enabled or empowered to autonomously detect abnormal conditions and stop. The team member pulling an andon cord on the assembly line is jidoka as much as an automatic machine.
  jidoka as a four-step process that engages when abnormalities occur.

Detect the abnormality.

Stop.

Fix or correct the immediate condition.

Investigate the root cause and install a countermeasure.

Jidoka, as applied to manned operations, refers to the practice of stopping the entire line or process when something goes amiss. This has important psychological and practical effects that contribute greatly to "continuous Improvement."

Now how does this apply to leadership???  In Japanese car manufactures they work in a assembly line.  Each station or part in the assembly line has a very important part in the ability to put together a car.  In a manufacturing plant, their is a bell that any one person can ring if they feel their is a problem with the car and completely stop the entire process.  This helps to create a level of quality control as well as an enormous buy in for the workers.  It gives the workers an increased responsibility and pride in their work. 

Every time the bell is rung, the workers stop and must fix the problem.  Putting this into a sports sense, if you give your staff the ability to "ring the bell", then they will have an increased value for you.  It will cause you as a leader to stop and examine how you do things as a coaching staff.  Constantly re-examining and looking at how to improve will lead to greater results when working with your players.

Thoughts on Leadership

a leader is 1 who commits people to action, converts followers to leaders, and who may convert leaders into agents of change." warren bennis

WHAT DO LEADERS DO?

• Leaders provide direction: they set goals by having a vision of the future.
• Leaders build a psychological and social environment that is conducive to achieving the teams goals.  The "Corporate culture"
• Instill values, in part of sharing their philosophy of life.  
• Motivate members of their group to pursue the goals of the group.
• Confront members  of the organization when problems arise and they resolve conflicts.
• Leaders communicate.

leadership Quotes

Nothing is more effective than sincere, accurate praise, and nothing is more lame than a cookie-cutter compliment.-- Bill Walsh

Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.
-- Eddie Robinson

Coaching is a profession of love. You can't coach people unless you love them.
-- Eddie Robinson

The secret to winning is constant, consistent management.
-- Tom Landry

My responsibility is leadership, and the minute I get negative, that is going to have an influence on my team.
-- Don Shula

“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control.-- Pat Riley

Quotes on The Process

I apologize for the long break I took from my blog.  I will once again be posting blog posts on a more regular basis.  My first 1 back is on some quotes that deal with taking care of the process.  Quoted are Nick Saban (Alabama), Derek Dooley (Tennessee), and Jimbo Fisher (FSU)
"Process-oriented thinking as opposed to outcome-oriented thinking: Some times you want to win so fast you don't know how to win. Our goal is to get the structure of the staff and the support and resources in place to facilitate a winning plan and get players into the structure and start affecting change now." Jimbo Fisher

"I don't think it's normal to be great. I think it's special. The human condition is to be average and to survive. And everybody assumes that everybody wants to be as good as they can be all the time, but that's not true. If that was the case, everybody would be doing fantastic out there, right? So it's special to be as good as you can be. It's special to work to reach your full potential. It's special to go do it every day, day-in and day-out and never give yourself a break."
Nick Saban

"(One) thing that's important that we do is start developing our brand of how we compete and how we play. We shouldn't ever lose sight of that. I'm talking not just schematically, but more so from an intangible standpoint -- what kind of competitive spirit we practice and play with. What's our discipline level? What's our toughness level What's our effort level on every play?"
Derek Dooley

"Everybody has got to ask themselves what they've got to do to get better, but I think the message to the team was 'Wherever you are, make a commitment to try and improve and raise the standard of how you can execute to help your unit and our team, how you can improve yourself, in terms of the effort that you give, the toughness that you play with and the ability to execute."
Nick Saban

"I would really like players to have more positive thoughts about practice, have fun in practice, look forward to how they can improve in practice, and how we can play better in games, have more positive thoughts rather than the difficulty of it all." Nick Saban

"We can all change. We can all learn. That's what separates guys -- the ability to learn and process information. We're not a very situation-smart football team. That's why we constantly put them in (situations) and educate them as to what to do." Jimbo FIsher

"I think it's important that your team become situationally smart -- trying to understand what the offense is thinking on second-and-10; playing the strengths and playing the weaknesses on third downs." Derek Dooley

"Everybody here can be replaced; coaches, players -- everybody. Stick your hand in a bucket of water and pull it out. The hole that's left is how much people will miss you, at any job."
Jimbo Fisher

"You hope the surprises are more the guys who really maybe didn't flash in shorts but now they're showing up (at practice) because of their toughness and because of their explosive power. That shows up more in pads -- especially up front in the trenches. That's really what you're looking at." Derek Dooley

My theory is if we're not coaching it, we're letting it happen." Nick Saban

Thoughts From Del Harris & George Raveling

This post will have a group of ideas from a bunch of different coaches that spoke at the Florida Coaching Clinic last year.
Del Harris

• Work Ethic
• If it’s about the time you spend in the office, then I disagree
• Efficient work is what you need to strive for.
• You need to have time to grow as a person.
• Read Books
• If you dont take time to read, you wont develop as a person
• If you dont like reading, then get books on tape.
• Recommends "Talent Code"
• Film
• Overrated, but should be used for positive reinforcement, not as a hammer on your own players.
• Offense
• Have fewer sets with more complex Options and counters
• When you get to the playoffs, everyone knows what you will run.

GEORGE RAVELING

• Value of Sharing & Relationships
• Nothing in life has any value, unless you share.
• We learned Everything about relationships when we were 10
   from our mom.
• Be Nice,make friends, tell the truth, play nice.
• Relationships should be a priority worked on everyday.
• Why are relationships so important
• The only difference between where you are now and where you’re going to be are the people you’ve met, the places you’ve been and the books you’ve read.
• Build and sustain a meaningful portfolio of relationships with core constituents which will ultimately assist in the enhancement of your basketball program and career.
•  3 Types of relationships:
• Type A: Partnerships (mutual vision and sharing).
• Type B: Solid, meaningful, ongoing relationship.
• Type C: Casual relationships (most relationships start off as Type C).
• Characteristics of Good Relationships:
  Loyalty.
  Trustworthiness.
  Appreciation.
  Commitment.
  Sincerity.
  Openness.
  Compassion.
  Responsibility.
  Generosity.
  Flexibility.
  Dependability.
  Respectfulness.

• 2 words that determine our success
• VOICES & CHOICES
•  If we listen to the right voices, we will make the right choices
•