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Wally Bock's Supervisory Leadership Tips The Vince Lombardi Principle
Vince Lombardi was 46 when he took over a woeful Green Bay Packers football team that had only won a single game the year before. Over the next eight years, the Packers collected six division titles, five NFL championships, two Super Bowls (I and II) and achieved an overall record of 98-30-4. It wasn’t great strategy that did it.
For Lombardi, strategy was important, but what really insured winning was blocking and tackling, the basics. What really assured winning was executing those basics well. In game after game his Packers executed their way to victory over teams with all kinds of clever strategies.
There’s a lesson here. CEOs write most of the business books, so strategy gets a lot of attention. Changing strategies is the way CEOs look like they’re being effective and decisive.
The part where they talk to their subordinates about performance, hold them accountable, that part doesn’t seem to get as much attention. Most of the folks at the top think that’s not their job anymore. They see it as the job of the first-line supervisor.
They’re wrong.
Talking to people about their performance (supervision) is the job of everyone who’s responsible for the performance of a group. When you dig into the biographies and business books by leaders like Larry Bossidy or Jack Welch – among others – you find that talking about performance and holding people accountable, and giving them the resources to do the job, were important parts of what they did.
Vince Lombardi was right. It’s the blocking and tackling that wins the football games. The executing the basics over and over wins the business game, too. And, it’s talking to people about the performance that makes sure they do the right kind of blocking and tackling.
If you’re the boss, make sure that you talk to people about their performance. Make sure they understand what the critical basics are and how important it is to execute them every day. If you’re the boss of a larger organization, make sure you’ve got people talking to the folks who work for them about performance basics from the bottom all the way to the top.
For more on execution in a business context, read "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done" by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.
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