Organizational Secrets of the New England Patriots

•Respect opponents. Do not undermine your competition.
•It's leadership..not luck.
•Humble ownership. Top management sets the right direction.
•Consummate leadership is the key.
•Coachable players and staff.
•Look for overlooked talent.
•Focus on value; performance.
•Expectations. Past performance is no guarantee for future results.
•Everyone is a coach. Every member of an organization needs to take a lead.
•Being competitive is not a bad thing.
•The best marketing is a good product.


--Taken from James Lavin's book Management Secrets of the New England Patriots

Good Player, Great Player, Superb Player

GOOD PLAYER, GREAT PLAYER, SUPERB PLAYER


Positioning, Anticipation and Technique give Quickness; Therefore, you can always get quicker.

A Good player knows where he is on the court.
A Great player knows where everyone is on the court.
A Superb player knows where everyone is on the court and what everyone is going to do.

5 Things To Think About This Summer

Four Areas To Address & Think About This Summer As You Prepare For Fall Workouts:
1. Defensive Rebounding
2. Contesting Shots
3. Foul Trouble
4. Ability to Finish Plays
5. Getting Things To Your Favor--intangibles of your team

9 Simple But Successful Offensive Principles

1. Play within your capabilities--shot selection.
2. Think before you move and move with a purpose.
3. Play your defender on offense.
4. Read the defense.
5. Dribble to improve passing angle, balance floor, drive to basket or get out of trouble.
6. Pass away from the defense.
7. Set and Use screens properly.
8. Anticipate/ Rebound ALL shots.
9. Maintain proper spacing.

Thoughts on Passing The Basketball

General Ideas On Passing:
• Not very many good passers any more
• Everybody likes a good passer
• Good passing teams are happy teams
• Look to point and say thanks

Great passers can do these things:
• Pass with either hand
• Work on passing anytime they have a ball and a teammate
• Understand the people they pass to (right person, right place, right time)
• Zip their passes—with proper spacing you cannot throw a flick pass to hard
• Make the easy (simple) pass and pass away from the defense

Passing
1. Triple threat position
2. Use vertical fakes
3. Look off your pass
4. Step into the pass
5. Put your wrist in their forehead (flick pass)

Dependability

DEPENDABLE
Being a Team’s Go-To player
You know it when you have people on your team whom you cannot depend. Everyone on the team knows it. Likewise, you know the ones you can depend on.

The Essence of Dependability:
1. Pure Motives
2. Responsibility
3. Sound Thinking
4. Consistent Contribution

If you can’t depend on teammates all the time, then you can’t really depend on them any of the time. Consistency takes more than talent. It takes a depth of character that enables people to follow through—no matter how tired, distracted or overwhelmed they are.

“It’s not enough to do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required.”—Winston Churchill

Taken from John Maxwell's, "The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player"

Lawrence Frank's Building Blocks For Success

Building Blocks For Success

1. How We Play
a. Smart, Hard, Together
b. Protect the Paint First
c. Force Contested 2's Second
d. Gang Rebound
e. Attack Mentality
f. Take Great Shots

2. Core Values
a. Trust & Integrity
b. Accountability
c. Respect
d. Commitment
e. Sacrifice
f. Perseverance

3. Our Culture
a. Strive for Excellence
b. Hardest Working
c. Most Unselfish
d. Winning Attitude
e. Be a Great Teammate

Greg Maddux On Staying In The Present

Greg Maddux--Making Each Day A Masterpiece

Greg Maddux is the only pitcher in Major League Baseball history to win at least fifteen games for seventeen consecutive seasons. Re recalls some advice he once received from then-Cubs manager Tom Trebelhorn. "You know what the problem with players these days? Trebelhorn said. "They are always looking forward to something. They're never trying to do something today. They're always looking forward to the next off-day, the All-Star Break, the end of the season. They never stop and enjoy the day that's here."

Maddux says that he thought about that and saw that Trebelhorn had a point. In fact, Maddux realized that he had the same mind-set of looking only to the future and never enjoying the present moment. From that day forward, Maddux concluded, "I started enjoying each day...and really started loving the games from that day on."

The 33% Rule

33% Rule
You can divide the population into three categories:
1. The bottom third of people are whiners & complainers who suck the life out of you.
2. The middle third are people who suck the life out of you. The middle third are people who fluctuates from positive to negative depending on circumstances.
3. The Top third maintain a positive attitude even in adversity. These positive people in the top third are the leaders, the achievers, the game changers.

--Sue Enquist, UCLA Gymnastics Coach

Brad Stevens On TEAM

There's talent all over the nation. If a Team really comes together and really executes, you can beat a team on any given night. --Brad Stevens

Honesty, Brutal Honesty--Parcells Fundamental Lesson Of Leadership

Fundamental Element of Leadership—Honesty, Brutal Honesty You have to be honest with people—brutally honest. You have to tell them the truth about their performance, you have to tell it to them face-to-face and you have to tell it to them over and over again. Sometimes the truth will be painful, and sometimes saying it will lead to an uncomfortable confrontation. So be it. The only way to change people is to tell them in the clearest possible terms what they’re doing wrong. And if they don’t want to listen, they don’t belong on the team. --Bill Parcells

A Leagure of Their Own--What Makes Us Great

"It's gotten too hard"--Gina Davis

"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard anybody could do it. The hard is what makes us Great."--Tom Hanks

Vital Skill Sets--Recommended Reading

Just as we develop the skills of the players on our teams. Individual skill development isn't limited to the court or playing field. Skill development is necessary for leaders. The following is a reading list sorted by topic/ skill:

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & GOAL SETTING
As A Man Thinketh--James Allen
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life--Brian Tracy
Eat That Frog--Brian Tracy
First Things First--Stephen Covey
Five Major Pieces To The Life Puzzle--Jim Rohn
Focal Point--Brian Tracy
Goals--Brian Tracy
Learning Journeys--Marshall Goldsmith
Million Dollar Habits--Brian Tracy
Outliers--Malcolm Gladwell
Power of Focus--Jack Canfield
The Power of Who--Bob Beaudine
Seven Strategies For Wealth & Happiness--Jim Rohn
Think & Grow Rich--Napoleon Hill

COMMUNICATIONS & RAPPORT
Blink--Malcolm Gladwell
Definitive Book of Body Language--Alan & Barbar Pease
The Fred Factor--Mark Sanborn
How To Win Friends & Influence People--Dale Carnegie
In The Line of Fire--Jerry Weissman
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People--Stephen Covey

PROFESSIONAL MEETING SKILLS
Death By Meeting--Patrick Lencioni
How To Run A Successful Meeting--Milo Frank
Managing Meetings--Tim Hurdle
We've Got To Start Meeting Like This--Mosvick & Nelson

LEADERSHIP
Developing Leaders--Harvard Press
The 80/20 Principle--Richard Koch
The Effective Executive--Peter Drucker
Leadership--Rudolph Giuliani
Leadership 101--John Maxwell
On Becoming A Leader--Warren Benis
The Servant--James Hunter
The Speed of Trust--Stephen Covey
Winning--Jack Welch

MANAGEMENT
Crazy Busy--Edward Hallowell MD
Fish--Stephen Lundin
Flipping The Switch--John Miller
Getting Things Done--David Allen
Good To Great--Jim Collins
QBQ--John Miller
Predictably Irrational--Dan Ariely
Ready For Anything--David Allen
Who Moved My Cheese--Spencer Johnson MD

STRATEGIC PLANNING
The Art of War--Sun Tzu
Band of Brothers--Stephen Ambrose
Built To Last--Jim Collins
On War--Carl Von Clausewitz
Wisdom of Generals--William Cohen

Overcoached & Undertaught--Pete Carril Distinguishes Between Coaching & Teaching

Difference Between Coaching & Teaching

“There is a difference between teaching and coaching. When you are instructing your team about the actual game, you are teaching them, transmitting knowledge and information to them. There are guys who don’t teach their players anything or much of anything, but who go around and recruit the best players and win—they’re coaches but not teachers.”
--Pete Carril

Silence Your Inner Critic--Performance Equation

We all have this little "inner critic" that is trying to protect us from failure or harm. Ironically, in telling you what not to do what what you should do to avoid failure, this inner voice is keeping us from performing at our best.

Tim Gallwey,(Inner Game of Tennis, Inner Game of Work) sums up this phenomenon with an equation:

P=p-i

Gallwey's equation means Performance is equal to your potential minus the interference. He says that performance rarely equals potential because we create interference for ourselves that detracts from the potential. That interference shows up as those helpful, fear-based instructions intended to ward off failure or embarrassment.

--Taken from "The Next Level" by Scott Eblin

3 Defensive Essentials

1. Eliminate Easy Baskets As Much As Possible--to do this we mist do the following things every game:
a. Control the fastbreak. Have great transition defense.
b. Control individual breakdowns. Prevent scores created by dribble and cutter penetration.
c. Control the second shot baskets. Attack the rebound and loose ball.
d. Control the open shots. Rotate to cover/ prevent open men.
e. Force the opponent to make an extra pass or play.


2. Essential Component of the Defensive Mindset Is To:
a. Control the immediate threat, to do this requires knowledge of how to defend all the basic 2 & 3 man offensive exercises.

3. Other Essentials:
a. Talk on defense. Never been a great silent defense.
b. Help on defense. Willing to give yourself up for teammates.
c. Attack all penetration.
d. Have the courage to be physical. Put bodies on people. Make the first hit on blockouts and challenge cutters.

NCAA Preparation--Playing The Percentages

NCAA Preparation—Playing The Percentages

1. FG% is the highest correlation to winning—Must contest every shot
2. Turnover %--compare turnovers to how many possessions in the game--< 18%
3. Rebounding—30-40% of Offensive Rebounds
4. Rebounding—70-80% of Defensive Rebounds

3 Musts For Our NCAA Preparation

2011 NCAA Tournament Preparation

3 Musts For Us To Continue Our Success:

1. We Must Be SOUND
a. Great fundamentals
b. Servant leadership mentality
c. Clear minds/ Set on our Vision/ Limit Mental Clutter

2. We Must Be SOLID
a. In our TEAM Attitude
b. In our Work Ethic
c. In Sustaining Effort

3. We Must Be SIMPLE
a. Do what we do…Nothing to prove.
b. It’s all about what we do…Can only control our Attitude & Effort
c. The more we think, the slower our feet will be.
d. Respect our opponents, but fear none of them.
e. Limit distractions.

Most Important Thing Gene Bess Learned In Coaching

"I've only learned one thing in all my years of coaching. Your team must play very, very, very hard."
--Coach Gene Bess

"The Steeler Way"--Chuck Noll On Creating A Culture

Theodore Roosevelt said, "We need leaders who inspired idealism, leader whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls."

Chuck Noll was very clear on this point. His aim was to create a specific culture in everything he did and the way he did it--"The Steeler Way".

A player didn't have to be the biggest, fastest, or strongest at his position, and a coach didn't have to be the smartest or most creative, as long as everyone bought into the "Steeler Way".

When creating a culture, The Buy-In Factor is the key. It must be everywhere--trainers, strength coaches, academic advisors, office assistants, etc.