"Making lemonade when you're given lemons is leadership..."

 I am currently reading a book by the late NFL Hall of Fame football coach, Bill Walsh entitled "The Score Takes Care Of Itself".  Bill Walsh is perhaps best known as the 3x Super Bowl winning head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and inventor of what is now commonly referred to as the "West Coast offense".  In the book, Walsh writes, "Making lemonade when you're given lemons is leadership; making lemonade when you don't have any lemons is great leadership."  By every measure then, Bill Walsh was not only a great NFL football coach, but he was also a great leader.

Let me explain.  When Walsh took over as head coach of the 49ers in 1979, the team was in complete disarray.  During the two previous seasons, the 49ers win-loss record had been 7-23.  Overall, the team had never appeared in the Super Bowl or won a NFL championship.  Unfortunately, the team finished 2-14 in Walsh's first season as head coach.  They finished 6-10 the following season, but the team had started to show some evidence of improvement (several of the team's losses had been close).  Most importantly, Walsh benched his quarterback, Steve DeBerg in favor of future Hall of Famer, Joe Montana.  The next year, the team would win the NFC championship (defeating the Dallas Cowboys in a game memorable for Dwight Clark's last second touchdown reception, known as "The Catch") and go on to win Super Bowl XVI over the Cincinnati Bengals.  It was an incredible turnaround!  By the time that Coach Walsh stepped down as head coach after the 1988 season, his 49ers team had won three Super Bowls (XVI, XIX, and XXIII) .  More important, under his leadership, the 49ers built a dynasty that would go on to win five Super Bowls with a number of future NFL Hall of Famers.  Making lemonade out of lemons?  One could certainly argue that the team that Walsh took over had very few lemons - he made lemonade out of nothing!

There is perhaps no better example of making lemonade when you don't have lemons than the genesis of the "West Coast offense."  As the story goes, Bill Walsh was working as an assistant coach for the legendary Cincinnati Bengals coach, Paul Brown in the early 1970's.  The Bengals were short on talent (sound familiar?), particularly on the offensive side of the football.  Their quarterback, Virgil Carter, was quick, mobile, and accurate, but he lacked the kind of arm strength to make the deep passes that were popular at the time.  The Bengals also lacked the kind of running game that was necessary for the typical offense in use by most NFL teams at the time.  So what do you do in this situation?  You improvise and adapt!  Bill Walsh designed an offense that would take advantage of the Bengals' key strengths - speed and agility.  Rather than relying upon long, deep passes to fast wide receivers ("vertical" offense), he designed an offense where running backs, tight ends, and wide receivers would run short, tight passing routes that his quarterback Virgil Carter could easily throw.  He also stretched out the passing routes horizontally to take advantage of the width of the field.  

The rest, as they say, is history.  Defenses were slow to adapt and respond to this new type of offensive strategy.  The Bengals were successful with the new strategy and started winning.  When Paul Brown retired from coaching, the Bengals named Bill Johnson as the new head coach, so Bill Walsh left to join the San Diego Chargers coaching staff.  After spending some time in San Diego, he became the head coach for Stanford University, where the team's opponents found out how hard it was to defend the "West Coast offense."  Walsh was soon asked to become the head coach for the San Francisco 49ers, largely as a result of the success of his new offense.

Making lemonade out of a bunch of lemons - that's what Bill Walsh did with his "West Coast offense."  That's leadership!  Designing a strategy to fit the unique skills and assets of your team is exactly what great leaders do.