Crisis Management

Crisis Management

We teach our team that during any single event, season, etc. there will be three crises to manage for each team. The team that manages the 3 crises the best, generally win those games.

We want our team to understand that each practice, game, etc. there will be some adversity, crisis for us to encounter.

The following is taken from “Beyond Basketball”:

Crises are not handled in the instant they occur but are prepared for in all of the moments that you and your team spend leading up to that one. Every team meeting, every individual conversation that occurs during the season establishes who we will collectively be when a crisis occurs.
Crisis causes people to think and act as individuals rather than as part of a team. A leader’s goal during these times must be to refocus every individual’s attention on the group, the entity that you have created, which is far stronger than each separate individual.

10 Attitudes of Top Achievers

10 Attitudes of Top Achievers by Brian Tracy

If you think the same way as the top achievers think, you can begin to get the same results they do. Here are 10 psychological and practical ways to mirror the attitudes of top achievers.

1. See yourself as a consultant rather than a salesperson. Believe that you are a problem-solver with regard to your product and how the client can best use it.
2. Become a doctor of selling. Act in the best interests of your “patients” and have a high code of ethics.
3. See yourself as the president of your own sales corporation. Accept 100 percent responsibility for your results.
4. Commit yourself to being the best in your field. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning.
5. Be ambitious, hungry, and determined to use selling as a steppingstone to the success you want in life.
6. Have integrity. Be honest with yourself and others.
7. Engage in thorough preparation prior to every call.
8. Be an excellent listener; be extremely customer-focused.
9. Have tremendous courage. Be willing to face your fears of rejection and failure, and overcome them.
10. Be highly persistent. Start your workday earlier, work harder, and stay longer.

To make these changes work you must walk, talk and behave consistently with them every hour of every day.

Getting Players To Cut Hard

Getting players to understand how to cut "HARD," is often difficult to do. Of course, all players think that they are cutting hard, but we know it's not hard enough.

Our general rule is that coaches don't pass in drills. However, one quick drill we do is to have our coaches start with the pass to make them go after the ball. To make them get a feel for how hard we want them to cut. Then add players passing.

Otherwise, they are passing and cutting at their own speed.

The Team, The Team, The Team

"THE TEAM, THE TEAM, THE TEAM"--Bo Schembechler

"How different would the culture of the team/ program be...If everytime of a situation you didn't think of how dies it affect me? But rather how does it help/affect us (the team)?

The Best Potential of Me is We

• Prejudice is a great time saver, it enables one to form opinions without bothering to know the facts.
• Society is like the turtle, the only way it can get ahead is to stick its neck out.
• Nineteen of twenty-one notable civilizations have died from within and not by conquest from without.
• The world must learn to work together, for finally it will not work at all. (Eisenhower)
• When a man is wrapped up I himself the package is usually pretty small.
• It is a low of human life, as certain as gravity: To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people—not love things and use people.

• Now this is the Law of the Jungle:
As old and as true as they sky; and the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die, For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Pack is the Wolf (Kipling)

• If you trust, you will be disappointed occasionally, but if you mistrust, yo will be miserable all the time.
• People can be divided into three groups:
1. Those who make things happen
2. Those who watch things happen,
3. And those who wonder what happened

• Times such as ours have always bred defeatism. But there remains, nonetheless, some few among us who believe man has within him the capacity to meet and overcome even the greatest challenges of the time. If we want to avoid defeat, we must wish to know the truth and be courageous enough to act upon it. If we get to know the truth and have the courage, we need not despair. (Einstein)

Dick Bennett Re: Big Games

"In big games versus quality opponents you worry about scoring. In those games you must be able to execute in the half-court as well as run the ball."

Coach Suhr on Internal Leadership

I'm fortunate to work down the hall from a coaching legend. Coach Brendan Suhr's experience is a great resource.

"You must win with 'Internal Leadership'. Other people have to lead. Three to five players have to lead the way. Players must articulate your message. Maybe better than you do."

Most Important Part of a Program

Serving could be the single most important lesson we learn in this program.

Response to Seth Godin's Blog Re: Coach Meyer

As a coach, not a blogger, or a writer I want to respond to Seth Godin’s blog. I apologize for the stream of consciousness writing, but I saw this and wanted to respond.

He blogged about Buster Olney’s book, “How Lucky You Can Be” about Coach Don Meyer. He concluded from the book that it was a “sad book”. Not because of the accident, but because of the misguided management technique used by Coach Meyer.

Coach Meyer did push everyone in the program to excellence. ARETE. Godin’s blog stated that Meyer’s misguided attempts do not work and do not last.

This is so far from the truth, as the book points out. He set expectations to challenge us in all areas of our lives. When you look at players, coaches and student assistants that have come through the program you see, “the power of self direction and the benefits of mutual support” and we continue to seek it out over and over again.

The lessons from Coach Meyer have lasted long past any game, season, and 4 year career. The ideals of excellence, honesty, hard work, making the next best action, and on and on have not only carried me through my career, my family and onto my children.

It is not a sad book. It is sad that Seth Godin didn't see what all of us who have worked or played with Coach Meyer have seen and continue to see. The book is a great example of a legacy that Coach Meyer has left that extends far beyond the locker room.

Please read the book and decide for yourself.

Build For Lasting Quality

Make excellence your goal. Strive to be the best. These are both different ways of saying the same thing: Build for lasting quality. Successful people are quality (process) oriented people. Pat Williams said that all the successful people he has met seem to possess four attitudes that are focused on lasting quality. The four attitudes are:
1. Strive for perfection
2. Pay attention to details
3. Constantly try to improve
4. Give it all you've got.

Four simple tasks. But the greats always keep it simple.

Only Just A Minute

One of the favorite things for our team is when Felicia works with our team and quotes the following poem:

I have only just a minute,
Only sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon me, can't refuse it.
Didn't seek it, didn't choose it.
But it's up to me
to use it.
I must suffer if I lose it.
Give account if I abuse it.
Just a tiny little minute,
but eternity is in it.
Anonymous

Lombardi On Purpose

Lombardi On Purpose

“Act with purpose. “I’m not better nor less than the next man. But I always knew what my acts would mean. I was luck, and I found a singleness of purpose early on.”

Using Talent Fearlessly

“The good runners were all talented and worked hard, but the best runners were able to use their talent fearlessly.”

Apollo 13 Problem Solving--Noise of a Thousand Crises

Ron Howard discussed his process of Problem Solving in the January issue of Success Magazine. He uses the interviews from the Apollo 13 crew as a basis for his philosophy.

• Develop a process for dealing with problems
• Identify the most important tasks
• Can’t let the “noise of a thousand crises overwhelm me.”
• Lessons from Apollo 13:
--Astronauts, Jim Lovell and Fred Haise kept talking about “working the problem”
--They use that as kind of a mantra..It’s basically that as a test pilot, you’re trained that you could crash your plane and die on one of these test flights. That happens. But if you crash, you’d better crash flipping switches and trying to figure it out. Because every once in a while somebody figures it out 10 feet from the ground. So that notion of clear out all the “stuff” and work the problem is a simple mantra that makes a lot of sense.
--Part of what you have to do is to not avoid the problem.

Rise Above The Fear

It's impossible to achieve greatness or fulfillment without embracing fear. While failure, ridicule or even physical danger may lie beyond the confines of comfort, reaching for new heights requires risk. The choice then is this:
Subsist in mediocrity or push past fear and become the person you were meant to be.

The 5 "Wells" of Leadership

Morehouse President, Dr. Robert Franklin, is the tenth President of Morehouse, and follows a long-standing tradition in masterfully guiding and leading the college toward excellence.

Dr. Franklin has highlighted five important “expectations” that all Morehouse Men must meet, but I think we’d all be better off if we could embrace these all-important qualities of leaders.

The Five Wells:

1. Well-read: Dr. Franklin encourages students to read books, not just summaries of books, and choose an accomplished and prolific writer as a role model. Books open doors and allow us to peak around the walls that society can sometimes build in front of us. Leaders must be well-read.

2. Well-spoken: Just as important as reading is the study of grammar and syntax: "This reduces the necessity of relying on profanity or empty verbal placeholders like, 'um, uh, ahh . . . ' or nonsense like 'you know what I'm saying?'” Leaders mean what they say and they say what they mean.

3. Well-traveled: Seeing the world outside of your own community opens your eyes to opportunities and the needs of others much bigger and more meaningful than you could ever imagine from the comfort of “home.” Dr. Franklin encourages his students to “get out there, break new ground, and take others with you.” Leaders go...

4. Well-dressed: The way you dress does not only reflect the way you feel about yourself, it also sends signals to the people around you. Morehouse doesn’t have a strict “dress code,” but as Dr. Franklin says, “You can enjoy yourself while wearing comfortable clothing that respects the fact that you are part of a community of educated and ethical men… Wear what you wish to off campus, but while you are here on the ground where [Benjamin] Mays and Martin [Luther King Jr.] and Maynard [Jackson] walked, you will be well-dressed." The way you dress can be a direct reflection of your respect for others. Leaders present themselves in a respectful manner.

5. Well-balanced: Dr. Franklin says that being a strong leader is about attaining skills such as compassion, civility, integrity and even listening well. He wants his students to be spiritually disciplined, intellectually astute and morally wise… humble and willing to lift others as they climb to new heights. Being well-balanced prepares us for the unexpected and allows us the ability to act and react to the world in positive ways. Leaders are well-balanced and well-rounded.

--Taken from Dan Cathy

Coach Bob Green Thoughts On The Season

"The season's a lot like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes." --Coach Bob Green

Coach John Fox--"Walk of Life"

From John Fox to his team:

"Throughout your walk in life, you will have prosperity. You will also have adversity. You must know how to deal with both because how you do will define you. Some guys don't know how to handle prosperity. Believe me, you are never as good as people tell you that you are. And you are never as bad as they tell you are. Don't let anyone tell you any of that. You define what you are."

"You can't allow failure to make you fail. Look adversity in the eye and don't back down. Adversity is our glue--it cements us to each other. It brings us together and it's part of the process."