What It Takes To Be Number One

Running a football team is no different than running a business. Results are the bottom line. What running any organization comes down to is the consequences that are brought about by your leadership. The absence of positive results render your leadership a failure. Bookstores are full of books regarding the debate about organizational structure: hierarchical or flat, central or decentralized, and everything in between. Yet it’s not structure, but results, that make a leader. Leadership isn’t a position, it’s a process that produces the desired results. If you don’t produce results, if you don’t execute – you’re not a leader.

Leaders get paid for results, not for being right. Results come from mistakes – being wrong – and leaders must possess Coach Lombardi’s mental toughness to handle mistakes, take accountability for them, and quickly abandon efforts that fail to produce results.

If you are right all the time you aren’t taking enough risks. Results require a willingness to act, even if you are unsure of what lies ahead. And, almost always, you will be unsure. Only through risk and action can you take your organization to the next level.

Results, specific and measurable, come from having a clear vision, defining what improvement and adaptation look like and having a beginning and an end in mind. Results come from knowing what you are achieving today and having a clear, specific strategy for closing the gap between today’s reality and your vision for tomorrow.