800-CEO-READ Blog

Michael Lewis Channels The Wisdom of Bill Purcells

For folks like me who still consider Michael Lewis’s Moneyball one of the top five books ever written on developing talent, his new book screams for my reading time. And in the meantime, how about this great quote taken from Lewis’s article What Keeps Bill Parcells Awake At Night (This appeared yesterday in the new New York Times Sunday sports magazine, titled Play):

At halftime there’s no chance for a speech — several of the Cowboys reappear on the field four minutes after they left — but Parcells has taken precautions. This morning, before the game, he called a meeting of the players without the assistant coaches. “I don’t want to talk with the coaches around,� he told me beforehand. “I want the players to know that I am trying to make a point.� This morning, he broke into his personal binder, took out the story of Vito Antuofermo and read it to his players. All week long it wasn’t strategy that occupied him; it was character. There’s a tendency to believe that, to be successful, a pro football coach must have a gift for the chessboard aspect of the game. But strategy isn’t what chiefly interests Parcells. His success depends on his ability to demand, and to receive, higher levels of performance from his players. He doesn’t say so explicitly, but his actions speak for him: he spends much more time thinking about getting inside his players’ heads, and their skins, than about anything else. He tries to make them uncomfortable. On a baseball team or a golf team, this sort of pressurized approach might lead to a team-wide nervous breakdown. In football — at least for him — it works magic.